Georg Axhausen

Georg Axhausen was a German oral and maxillofacial surgeon who lived from 1877 to 1960. He studied medicine at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Akademie in Berlin and received his doctorate in 1901, then trained in the surgical clinic at Kiel under Heinrich Helferich, in the pathology institute at Friedrichshain Hospital under Ludwig Pick, and from 1909 to 1924 in the surgical clinic of the Berlin Charite. He qualified as a lecturer in 1908, became an associate professor four years later, and in 1928 a full professor and director of the dental institute at the Charite. A critic of Nazi policy, he publicly opposed sterilisation of people with cleft palate and was forced into early retirement in 1939, returning to teaching in 1946. He specialised in the pathology and surgery of bones and joints, was known for pioneering studies of bone grafting and of necrosis of the epiphysis, and introduced the term aseptic necrosis, now called avascular necrosis. The Axhausen operation, a method of closing a cleft palate, bears his name.