Otto Grosser

Otto Grosser (born November 21, 1873 in Vienna , † March 23, 1951 in Thumersbach at Zell am See ) was an Austrian physician (anatomy, embryology). Grosser was the son of a railway engineer, went to grammar school in Vienna and studied medicine t the University of Vienna, where he received his doctorate in 1899 with distinction (sub auspiciis imperatoris). His teachers included Emil Zuckerkandl and Ferdinand Hochstetter . In 1902 he completed his habilitation in Embryology, became associate professor in Vienna in 1907 and, in 1909, full professor of anatomy at the German University in Prague . The chair he had until 1945, when he fled from Prague to the Salzkammergut. In embryology he investigated the causes of malformations, the development of the intestine, the gill intestine, and the respiratory organs. He examined the development of the trophoblast , the diet of embryos in viviparous animals, published a classification of the placenta and the timing of the fertility (in which he advocated a dissenting opinion of Hermann Knaus ). During National Socialism, he headed the Science Department of the NS-Dozentenbund and was an anthropology and ontogeny clerk for the journal Der Biiolog , published by the SS-Ahnenerbe . After the war he was therefore biased . 1928/29 and 1934/35 he was rector of the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. In 1936 he became an honorary doctor in Breslau. In 1939 he received the Carus Prize and in 1943 the Goethe Medal for Art and Science . He was a member of the Leopoldina , the Berlin and Vienna Academies of Sciences. In 1911 he became a real member and in 1918 President of the German Society of Science and the Arts in Prague. Otto Grosser was a member of the board of trustees of the Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff Prize, which was nominated for Deutschtum in the Sudetenland, Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, He was second chairman of the International Embryological Institute in Utrecht. The term Hoyer-Grossersche organs ( Glomus cutaneum ) for these ball-like arterio-venous anastomoses , for which he provided important supplements to Hoyer's 1877 [1] observations in 1902 , is named after him and after Henryk Fryderyk Hoyer . The Grosserweg in Vienna was named after Otto Grosser in 1955.