Gunther von haggen biography of alberta

Gunther von Hagens (1945) is a German anatomist who invented the technique for preserving biological tissue specimens called plastination.

Hagens Life in Science

Gunther von Hagens' life reads like an archetypal scientist's resume—distinguished by early precocity, scholarship, discovery, experimentation, and invention.

It is also the profile of a man shaped by extraordinary events, and marked by defiance and daring.

Von Hagens' two year imprisonment by East German authorities for political reasons, his release after a $20,000 payment by the West German government, his pioneering invention that halts decomposition of the body after death and preserves it for didactic eternity, his collaboration with donors including his best friend, who willed and entrusted their bodies to him for dissection and public display, and his role as a teacher carrying on the tradition of Renaissance anatomists, make his a remarkable life in science.

Anatomist, inventor