Paul Zweifel

Paul Zweifel (1848 to 1927) was a German gynecologist and physiologist, born in Höngg near Zürich, whose father was a physician. He took his medical degree at the University of Zürich in 1871 and worked at Strassburg, where he studied the physiology of the fetus and placenta in the institute of Felix Hoppe-Seyler. In 1876 he became professor of gynecology at Erlangen and in 1887 moved to Leipzig, where he was Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology until he retired in 1921. In 1876 he was the first to demonstrate that the fetus in utero is metabolically active and consumes oxygen, a question hotly debated before him, and his finding opened the modern era of fetal physiology research. He also used statistics to compare competing obstetrical procedures, wrote a widely used textbook of obstetrics and contributed over one hundred monographs to medical journals.