Karl von Hecker

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Karl von Hecker (8 May 1827 – 14 December 1882) was a German gynecologist and obstetrician born in Berlin. He was the only son of medical historian Justus Hecker. He studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris and Vienna, earning his doctorate in 1848 in Berlin. In 1851 he became an assistant in the obstetrics clinic at the Berlin Charité under Dietrich Wilhelm Heinrich Busch. In 1853 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on retroversion of the gravid uterus, or when the uterus tilts backward during pregnancy. In 1858 he became an associate professor of obstetrics at the University of Marburg, and the following year he accepted a position as a gynecologist at the University of Munich. In Munich he also directed the city’s maternity hospital and a school for midwives. He served as university rector in 1874/75. From 1877 he worked with Carl Siegmund Franz Credé and Alfred Hegar to create an independent gynecology society, which eventually led to the founding of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gynäkologie in 1885, after his death. Hecker was the son-in-law of politician Johann Caspar Bluntschli.