author
Ernst Georg Ferdinand Küster
1839–1930
A pioneering German surgeon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he helped shape modern surgical practice and left his name attached to several medical terms. His career stretched from Berlin hospitals to university lecture halls, linking hands-on medicine with teaching and research.
1 Audiobook
Geschichte der Neueren Deutschen Chirurgie
by Ernst Georg Ferdinand Küster
About the author
Born on November 2, 1839, in Wollin, Ernst Georg Ferdinand Küster studied medicine in Bonn, Würzburg, and Berlin. After graduating, he worked with surgeon Robert Ferdinand Wilms at Berlin’s Bethanien Hospital, then went on to build a long academic and clinical career in surgery.
Küster became habilitated in surgery in 1875 and later served as chief physician and associate professor in Berlin. From 1893 to 1907, he was professor of surgery at the University of Marburg, before returning to Berlin. He was known not only as an accomplished surgeon, but also as a teacher whose work connected hospital practice with university medicine.
He is remembered for contributions to urology and surgery, and for medical eponyms such as the Küster operation and Küster’s disease. Küster died in Berlin on April 19, 1930, after a career that spanned a period of major change in European medicine.