Gabriele Possanner

Gabriele Possanner (27 January 1860 – 14 March 1940) was the first woman medical doctor to practice medicine in Austria.

Biography She was the daughter of the Austrian jurist Benjamin Possanner, and lived in six different cities until the age of twenty due to him moving often for his work. In October 1880 he was appointed as Section Chief at the Imperial Treasury in Vienna, and the family, including Gabriele, was able to settle in Vienna. She had been given a medical degree by the University of Zurich in 1894, but it was not until 1897 that she was able to take the viva voce examination a second time, this time in front of Viennese examiners, thus qualifying her to practice as a doctor in Austria. She thus became the first woman to graduate from the University of Vienna with a medical degree in 1897.