Max Neuburger

Born in Vienna on December 8, 1868, Max Neuburger became an Austrian physician and one of the leading historians of medicine of his time. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, earned his medical degree in 1893, and began his career with hospital work and research connected to neurology before shifting more and more toward medical history.

At the University of Vienna, he played a major role in establishing the history of medicine as a formal academic discipline. He was appointed professor of the history of medicine in 1904 and is closely associated with the development of what became the Institute for the History of Medicine there. His writing, including major studies of medical history, made him an important international voice in the field.

Neuburger lived through the upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century and, after the Nazi era disrupted university life in Austria, eventually returned to Vienna. He died there on March 15, 1955. Today he is remembered both as a physician and as a scholar who helped preserve and interpret medicine's long intellectual past.