Leopold Freund-January 7, 1943 was an Austrian

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

-Jewish radiologist, considered the founder of medical radiology and radiotherapy.

Leopold Freund was born in Miskovice

Miskovice

Miskovice is a village in Kutná Hora District, Central Bohemia, Czech Republic, located 4.5 km west of Kutná Hora. On the date August 8, 2006 it has 873 inhabitants. First written notice about village is from year 1131....

 in Central Bohemia, then part of the Autro-Hungarian empire, now part of the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. He died in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 in 1943.

Freund was a professor of radiology

Radiology

Radiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...

 at the Medical University of Vienna

Medical University of Vienna

The Medical University of Vienna is a medical university in Vienna, Austria.Formerly the faculty of medicine of the University of Vienna, became an independent university on January 1, 2004...

 and is considered the founder of medical radiology and radiotherapy. He is the first physician known to have used ionizing radiation for therapeutic purposes. In 1896, a year after the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen

Röntgen

The roentgen is a unit of measurement for exposure to ionizing radiation , and is named after the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen...

 and in same year that Antoine Henri Becquerel

Becquerel

The becquerel is the SI-derived unit of radioactivity. One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The Bq unit is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s−1...

 discovered radioactivity, Freund successfully treated a five year old patient in Vienna suffering from hairy moles

Melanocytic nevus

A melanocytic nevus is a type of lesion that contains nevus cells .Some sources equate the term mole with "melanocytic nevus". Other sources reserve the term "mole" for other purposes....

 covering her whole back. The case was published by the girl's local physician, Schiff, in 1901. In 1903, he published the first textbook on radiation therapy.

Freund also published fundamental work on the treatment occupational diseases with light and on the use of X-rays for testing construction materials.

Freund, who was a Jew, emigrated in 1938 to Belgium, following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

.

External links

• Leopold Freund (in German), in: Judith Bauer-Merinsky: Die Auswirkungen der Annexion Österreichs durch das Deutsche Reich auf die medizinische Fakultät der Universität Wien im Jahre 1938: Biographien entlassener Professoren und Dozenten. Wien: Diss., 1980, S. 59-61b. PDF