Eduard Pernkopf

Eduard Pernkopf was an Austrian professor of anatomy who later served as rector of the University of Vienna, his alma mater. He is best known for his sevenvolume anatomical atlas, Topographische Anatomie des Menschen , prepared by Pernkopf and four artists over a 20year period. While it is considered a scientific and artistic masterpiece, with many of its color plates reprinted in other publications and textbooks, it has been in recent years dogged by questions about whether Pernkopf and the artists working for him, all of them ardent Nazis, used concentration camp inmates or condemned political prisoners as their subjects.

Pernkopf was born in 1888 in the Lower Austria village of Rappottenstein, near the border with Bavaria. The youngest of three sons, he seemed to be considering a career in music upon his completion of the Gymnasium in Horn. However, the death of his father, the villages doctor, in 1903 led him to pursue medicine instead, as his fathers death caused the family considerable hardship that a career as a physician was more likely to reverse.

Source: Wikipedia