Alexander Ecker

Who was Alexander Ecker?

Johann Alexander Ecker was a German anthropologist and anatomist born in Freiburg im Breisgau.

He studied medicine in Freiburg, where in 1840 he started work as a prosector. During the following year, he was a lecturer in Heidelberg, where he was influenced by Friedrich Tiedemann, Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm Bischoff and Maximilian Joseph von Chelius. In 1844 he became a full professor at Basel, later returning to Freiburg as a professor of physiology and comparative anatomy.

As an anthropologist, Ecker is remembered for excavations of early burial sites in the Kaiserstuhl region of southwestern Germany. At the University of Freiburg, he created a museum of anthropology and ethnography. With prehistorian Ludwig Lindenschmit the Elder, he founded the first German journal of anthropology, the Archiv für Anthropologie.

Ecker conducted anatomical studies of the brain, being known for his investigations of cerebral convolutions in the fetus. His name is associated with "Ecker's fissure", also known as the petro-occipital fissure.