Dr. Rudolf Eduard Elkan

Rudolf Elkan was a German physician, who emigrated to England, changing his name to Edward, where he developed the xenopus pregnancy test and served on the medical sub-committee of the National Birth Control Association.

http://www.britishcheloniagroup.org.uk/testudo/v6/v6n5cooper

Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1895, Edward Rudolf Elkan was, from an early age, an enthusiastic naturalist and this interest in biology led to his training as a medical doctor. Later, he studied tropical diseases and spent six years in Palestine, which was then under British mandate. He returned to Hamburg in 1930 and resumed medical practice. This, however, was to last for only a few years, for the pressures of Nazism forced him to leave his home country and to fee to England. After acquiring a British medical degree, he again found himself in general practice but his career began to change course in 1939 when the Second World War started and a beleaguered and embattled Britain was no longer able to bring in from overseas medical and other items, including African clawed toads (Xenopus laevis) needed for pregnancy diagnosis and other purposes. Edward Elkan established a thriving diagnostic laboratory in Britain for the production and use of Xenopus and quickly became an authority on its management, health and diseases. This led to the studies of the biology and pathology of other ectothermic vertebrates – amphibians, reptiles and fish.

In 1965 Edward Elkan co-authored Professor H. Reichenbach-Klinke in producing the first authoritative text on this subject, ‘The Principal Diseases of Lower Vertebrates, published by Academic Press. This was followed, in 1974, by the appearance of an atlas which depicted in colour the authors’ findings and observations. Edward Elkan wrote many scientific papers, most illustrated with his own photographs and line drawings, and at the time of his death, aged 88, he still had a publication in press on reptiles.