[Alfred Kohn, professor of histology at German University in Prague]

Prof. Kohn (1867-1959) was the head of the Institute of Histology at the Medical Faculty of German University in Prague for 26 years. In 2007 we commemorated his 140th birthday, and 2009 we will remember the 50th anniversary of his death. He entered the history of medicine by discovery of nature and origin of parathyroid glands and by pioneer research into chromaffin cells and sympathetic paraganglia. Kohn's papers on the pituitary, interstitial cells of testes, and ovaries are also related to endocrinology. All his studies are based on descriptive and comparative histological and embryological observations. Kohn was twice the dean of German Medical Faculty, and a member or honorary member of many important scientific societies. He was repeatedly nominated for Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. For his Jewish origin he was expelled from Deutsche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und Künste für die Tschechoslowakische Republik in 1939 and transported to Terezin ghetto in 1943. After the war he lived in Prague. On the occasion of his 90th birthday he was elected honorary president of Anatomische Gesellschaft and awarded by the Czechoslovak Order of Labour. Alfred Kohn died in 1959. He was one of the outstanding personalities that Prague gave to the world of science.