Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
Medical research enjoys a tradition in Frankfurt. As early as 1763 the physician Johann Christian Senckenberg set up his natural sciences foundation, which is still internationally famous today.
In 1888, Alois Alzheimer became assistant physician at the “Municipal Asylum for the Insane and Epileptics” founded by the psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann (Frankfurt psychiatrist and creator of Struwwelpeter). Here, for the first time, he diagnosed a female patient with the “sickness of forgetting”, which was appropriately named after him in 1910.
Another leading Frankfurt citizen was the Nobel Prizewinner Paul Ehrlich. As a German chemist, doctor, serologist and immunologist, his research is seen as the beginning of chemotherapy and he was the first to develop a medical treatment for syphilis.
The Georg-Speyer-Haus of the Clinic of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt is today a worldwide leading research and treatment centre for AIDS. The results of studies conducted in Frankfurt on HI viruses are internationally acknowledged.
In addition to the aforementioned institutions there are also many other research organizations, clinics, companies, foundations and associations focussed on medicine, pharmacy and health. An overview of addresses can be seen in the individual branches.