Thieme mourns the death of Prof. Dr. med. Udo Schumacher

Outstanding commitment to students

Udo Schumacher has focused on PROMETHEUS Volume 3 - Head, Neck and Neuroanatomy. When preparing the learning units, he focused on the needs, wishes and problems of the students. "The courage to leave things out" was his motto here. "With regard to the clinical content in PROMETHEUS, it was particularly important to him to include those aspects that were essential for understanding anatomy or relevant to examinations," says Dr. Jochen Neuberger about his collaboration with Mr. Schumacher. Responsible for the PROMETHEUS product family at Thieme, he worked closely with Udo Schumacher until very recently.

Always on the pulse of science

At the same time, Mr. Schumacher was the "living radar" for new scientific publications on anatomy and clinical content related to anatomy. "We regularly received messages with 'potential nectar for PROMETHEUS', i.e. ideas for possible new content," continues Jochen Neuberger. Thanks to his international research activities, Mr. Schumacher was also very well connected. On his travels abroad - both privately and professionally - he always sought and maintained contact with PROMETHEUS licensees.

He leaves a gap - as an author and as a person

Udo Schumacher will be missed by Thieme - as an author with his passion for science and scientific rigor. As a person with his humor, his openness towards people, new topics and trends. "He was always solution-oriented, optimistic and was an entertaining storyteller," concludes Jochen Neuberger.

This was also how his colleagues and companions Professor Michael Schünke, Professor Erik Schulte, Markus Voll and Karl Wesker experienced him: "His often unconventional professional ideas were incomparable. His personal humor, with which he turned every work meeting into a special event, was also incomparable. The loss leaves us stunned. The memory makes us grateful."

He will be fondly remembered by all those who worked with him or met him at events.

A life for teaching and research

Udo Schumacher was born on the island of Sylt in 1956 and studied at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. After his preliminary medical examination, the young student was drawn to the "scientific Mecca" of the USA: he went to the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia for a year and worked in the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty. Back in Kiel, he completed his doctorate on serological reactions to foreign proteins in mice and received his license to practice medicine in 1983.

Fascinated by the anatomy of the human body, he initially worked at the Institute of Pathology at Kiel University before moving to the Department of Anatomy at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. There he led projects on AIDS and analyzed the causes of seal mortality. In 1991, Udo Schumacher went to the University of Southampton for seven years. In 1997, he returned to Germany and became head of the Institute of Anatomy and Experimental Morphology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). He taught in the fields of anatomy and histology and accompanied numerous medical students, physiotherapists and specialist candidates through their training and examinations. In addition, Udo Schumacher mainly researched the importance of carbohydrate residues in tumor spread and respiratory infections. He retired in the summer of 2022. Since fall 2022, he had taught at the MSB Medical School Berlin.