Joseph Asherman

Joseph Asherman was born in 1889 in Bratislava

Joseph (Gustav) Asherman was born in 1889 in Rosovice, a town near Prague in Austria-Hungary. He studied medicine at Charles University in Prague and earned a medical doctorate in 1913. In Prague he was a member of the Bar Kochba organization.

During World War I he was a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. In 1920 he moved to the Land of Israel and worked as a doctor in the Jezreel Valley, Yavneel and the Galilee.

He specialized in gynecology and headed the women's and maternity department at Hadassah Hospital on Balfour Street in Tel Aviv. He set up and ran the Tipat Halav well baby system, then founded and ran the Kirya Maternity Hospital, and became head of obstetric and gynecological services in Tel Aviv. He also led the Israel Gynecologists' Association and was a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He published dozens of medical papers. His papers of 1948 and 1950 characterized uterine scarring after curettage, a condition later named Asherman's syndrome. In 1960 he received the Szold Prize for Medicine and Public Hygiene as an honorary award.

From 1921 he was married to Malka Wilner, who died in 1965. They had a daughter, Nina, who married the writer Yehiel De-Nur. Asherman died in Herzliya in 1968 and was buried in Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery, and a street in Tel Aviv bears his name.