Pinkus, Walter H., 1942-

Felix Pinkus was born April 4, 1868 in Berlin, the son of the businessman Benjamin ("Benno") and Rosalie (née Franckel) Pinkus. He had three brothers: Paul, Georg and Eugen. In Berlin he attended the Friedrich Werder Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1885. Thereafter he studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau, with special interests in comparative anatomy and dermatology. At Freiburg he wrote his doctoral dissertation Über einen noch nicht beschriebenen Hirnnerven des Protopterus annectens (On an as yet undescribed cranial nerve of the Protopterus annectens) in 1894 – important because it identified and described the nervus terminalis (now called the nervus pre-olfactorius or olfactory nerve). In Freiburg he also met his future wife Elise Etzdorf, to whom he became engaged in 1890. After a ten-year engagement they married and went on to have two children Luise (born in 1902) and Hermann (born in 1905); both of their children became physicians.

After receiving his degree, Felix Pinkus worked at the Freiburg Anatomical Institute and in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich at the Koch Institute. He would later write a chapter on lymphatic leukemia in Ehrlich's book on leukemia in 1901. From 1895-1898 Felix Pinkus worked under Albert Neisser at the Dermatological University Clinic in Breslau. Afterward, he opened his own clinic for dermatology in Berlin. In 1902 he discovered Haarscheiben (tylotrich pads). In 1908 he became a lecturer at the University of Berlin in dermatology and venereal diseases, in 1916 an associate professor. In 1910 his textbook on skin and venereal disease was published. With Rudolf Isaac Felix Pinkus led the Policlinic for Skin Diseases in Berlin and was also director at the Women's Hospital of Reinickendorf ( Frauenkrankenhaus Reinickendorf ). During World War I he was a staff physician in the military hospital of Berlin. He wrote articles not only on skin diseases, but also frequently on venereal diseases, including on its treatment and societal statistics. In 1917 he became secretary of the German Society for Venereal Disease Control. He was also secretary of the Berlin Dermatological Society.

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