Ernst Rudin (1874-1952) was a psychiatrist and the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry in Munich beginning in 1931. He was also the president of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations. He went on to become a key figure in the Nazi eugenics program.

Rudin was an advocate of racial hygiene, and he is also remembered for helping start the psychiatric genetics field (Joseph & Wetzel, 2013). Through his research into genealogy, Rudin concluded that "feeble-mindedness" and its associated disorders were heritable, and could be prevented through eugenics (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.).

He was director of the Genelogical-Demographic Department at the German Institute for Psychiatric Research in Munich from 1917-1945. His work was influential in shaping racial policy of Nazi Germany, and he was awarded medals from the Nazis and Adolf Hitler personally. He was also a member of the Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy which formed in 1933 at the request of Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick.

Rudin played a major role in creating the 1933 sterilization law in Nazi Germany for the "genetically diseased" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.). He also supported Nazi killings of the mentally ill (Joseph & Wetzel, n.d.).

-Erna Kurbegovic

• Szollosi-Janze, M. (Ed.). (2001). Science in the Third Reich. Oxford: Berg.

• Ernst Rudin. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%BCdin.

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Dr. Ernst Rudin. Retrieved from

• Joseph, J., & Wetzel, N. A. (2013). Ernst Rudin: Hitler's Racial Hygiene Mastermind. Journal of the HIstory of Biology, 46(1), 1-30.