Ernst Gräfenberg

Ernst Gräfenberg (26 September 1881 – 28 October 1957) was a German-born physician and scientist. He developed the intrauterine device (IUD), and studied the role of the woman's urethra in orgasm. The G-spot is named after him.

Career Gräfenberg studied medicine at the University of Göttingen and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, earning his doctorate on 10 March 1905. He began working as a doctor of ophthalmology at the university of Würzburg, but then moved to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Kiel University, where he published papers on cancer metastasis (the "Gräfenberg theory"), and the physiology of egg implantation. In 1910 Gräfenberg worked as a gynaecologist in Berlin, and by 1920 was quite successful, with an office on the Kurfürstendamm. He was the chief gynaecologist of a municipal hospital in Britz, a working-class Berlin district, and was beginning scientific studies of the physiology of human reproduction at Berlin University.

During the First World War, he was a medical officer, and continued publishing papers, mostly on human female physiology. In 1929, he published his studies of the "Gräfenberg ring", the first IUD for which there are usage records.

17th-century, Dutch physician Regnier de Graaf described female ejaculation and referred to an erogenous zone in the vagina that he linked with the male prostate; this zone was later reported by Gräfenberg. The term "G-Spot" was coined by Frank Addiego et al. in 1981, named after Gräfenberg, even though Gräfenberg's 1940s research was dedicated to urethral stimulation. In 1950, Gräfenberg stated, "An erotic zone always could be demonstrated on the anterior wall of the vagina along the course of the urethra."

When Nazis assumed power in Germany, Gräfenberg, a Jew, was forced in 1933 to resign as head of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics in the Berlin-Britz municipal hospital. Ernst's father owned an iron wares business in Adelebsen and served as the head of the Jewish community there from 1868 to 1882, and as an Adelebsen community council member (Bürgervorsteher) from 1889 to 1893. In 1893 the family moved to Göttingen, where Ernst attended the municipal high school, or Gymnasium, later known as the . He died largely unnoticed on 28 October 1957 in New York City, but the Jewish weekly Aufbau published an obituary. He was buried on the Ferncliff Cemetery.