[Kurt Huldschinsky: A pioneer in the struggle against rickets]

Kurt Huldschinsky (1883-1940) was a German pediatrician who was one of the international leaders in the field of rickets research between the two world wars. After his medical studies, he served at the Kaiserin-Auguste-Victoria-Haus in Berlin and at the University Children's Hospital in Vienna, among other places. After World War I, he worked with the famous orthopedist Konrad Biesalski at the Oskar-Helene-Heim for the healing and education of frail children in Berlin. Here he was the first to prove that exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from mercury vapor lamps ("artificial sunlight") could cure rickets in young children, which is mostly caused by vitamin D deficiency. He published his discovery in this journal - the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift [German Medical Weekly] - in 1919. For this groundbreaking scientific achievement and his further research into the prevention and treatment of rickets, Huldschinsky was awarded the Otto Heubner Prize of the German Association of Pediatrics in 1926. He was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. As a Jew, however, he had to flee Germany from the National Socialists in 1933/34. Together with his wife and daughter, he emigrated to Egypt, where he died in Alexandria on October 31, 1940. As Huldschinsky was for many decades almost forgotten, this article recalls the life and work of a meritorious physician and scientist.