Albrecht Encke

Albrecht Franz Walter Encke (born June 24, 1935 in Remscheid ) is a German surgeon and former director of the Clinic for General and Vascular Surgery at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt / Main.

Life

Encke comes from a medical family. His father was an internist, his father a psychiatrist, his mother's father and father were general practitioners. One of the Enckes brothers is an internist.

In 1955 Encke graduated from high school in Remscheid. He studied medicine in Freiburg , Tübingen , Vienna and Cologne . In 1961 he finished his studies in Cologne with the grade “very good” and received his doctorate with the thesis “Skull sutures under normal and pathological conditions” with Wilhelm Tönnis .

During a stay in the USA with training at hospitals in Plainfield and Morristown in New Jersey , Encke decided to become a surgeon rather than an internist. After his return to Germany, he received a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG), which allowed him to conduct extensive research on blood clotting under Hanns Gotthard Lasch (1925–2009). Encke started his first assistant doctor position with Fritz Linder , also in Heidelberg . In 1970 he completed his habilitation with the thesis "Disseminated intravascular coagulation in surgery". In 1971 he became a senior physician at Heidelberg University Hospital . In 1974 he became an adjunct professor and in 1979 professor of surgery at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . Until his retirement in 2002 he was chief physician for general and vascular surgery . In 1985 he turned down an offer at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf .

Services

The first liver transplant took place in Frankfurt in 1986 under Encke's direction . His focus was on liver surgery, surgical oncology and surgical gastroenterology . He acquired specializations in vascular surgery and visceral surgery . In the 1999/2000 term of office, he was President of the German Society for Surgery and advocated evidence-based procedures in surgery. From November 2000 to May 2009 Encke was President of the AWMF ( Working Group of Scientific Medical Societies ), and until May 2015 he was a Past President of the AWMF Presidium. As AWMF President, he was, among other things, a member of the Federal Government's Health Research Council. He promoted the scientifically objectifiable procedure and working in consensus . In November 2015, Encke was appointed Honorary President for life by the Presidium and the Conference of Delegates of the AWMF in view of his services.

Awards

• In 2002 Encke received the silver medal of honor from the State Medical Association of Hesse.
• In 2006 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his voluntary work in scientific medicine and in hospice work in Frankfurt / Main .
• In 2010, Encke received the Paracelsus Medal of the German medical profession because he “made an outstanding contribution to the medical care of the population, the health system, medical self-administration and the common good in the Federal Republic of Germany”.
• 2015 appointment as honorary president of the AWMF

In addition, Encke received the Adolf Schmidt Medal of the Medical Faculty Day and the Rudolph Zenker Prize of the German Society for Surgery (DGCH)

Web links

• Laudation on the award of the Paracelsus Medal to Albrecht Encke (PDF, 45 kB)