Konrad Schäfer

Konrad Schäfer, born on 7 January 1911, was a German physician who worked as a researcher at the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Berlin. He studied at Munich, Berlin and Innsbruck and finished his studies at Heidelberg in December 1935, taking his doctorate in 1936, and later worked for the Luftwaffe medical testing department. He reported on thirst experiments carried out on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp, and is regarded as the inventor of a seawater desalination method tested there in 1944. He was accused in the Doctors' Trial of human experimentation at Dachau and was acquitted in 1947. He later conducted research for the U.S. Army Air Forces at Randolph Air Field until 1951. His entry records contested medical research ethics, not an endorsement of the work.