Education
Bernhard Fischer studied medicine in Strasbourg, Munich and Berlin, and obtained his doctoral degree in Bonn in 1900 and his Habilitation in 1903.
oncologist pathologist physician
Bernhard Fischer studied medicine in Strasbourg, Munich and Berlin, and obtained his doctoral degree in Bonn in 1900 and his Habilitation in 1903.
He was a leading cancer researcher and is world-renowned as the father of petrochemical carcinogenesis. His doctoral advisor was Karl Koester, himself a student of Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen and a grand-disciple of the father of modern pathology, Rudolf Virchow. Bernhard Fischer became Professor and Prosector at the Augusta Hospital in Cologne in 1908.
Already in the same year, he was appointed Director of the Senckenberg Institute of Pathology in Frankfurt, at the age of 31, and became Professor Ordinarius of Pathology at the Goethe University Frankfurt from its establishment by the wealthy liberal citizenry of Frankfurt in 1914.
From 1930 to 1931, he was Rector of the Goethe University Frankfurt. As rector of the university, he was noted for his elitist views, believing university education should be reserved for the talented few.
He was perceived by the Nazis as a representative of the "liberal old professors."
His students and long-time collaborators at the Senckenberg Institute of Pathology included Philipp Schwartz, Rudolf Jaffé and Edgar Goldschmid. The young physician Rose Hölscher made a silhouette of him, published in the booklet Frankfurter Charakterköpfe with portraits from the Faculty of Medicine from 1921.