Erich Geiringer
Erich Geiringer was a New Zealand writer, publisher, broadcaster, Fulbright scholar 1953, a leading member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and the founder of the New Zealand Medical Association. George Salmond described him in a memorial tribute as, 'one of the most significant public health figures in New Zealand in the last half century'.
Born in Vienna in 1917, Geiringer escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, going first to Belgium and later the United Kingdom, attending medical school in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He gained a PhD in adreno-cortal transplantation from the University of Edinburgh in 1954. In New Zealand he became a researcher at Otago Medical School in the 1960s. In the same period his pamphlets on advocating cervical smears were banned by a University for, 'being obscene'. According to The Independent he dragged New Zealand medicine into the modern world. He was the founder of the New Zealand Medical Association. Geiringer held a radical stance in the pro-abortion lobby, campaigning in the early 1970s for solidarity with jailed abortionists.
Geiringer was the author of a book on Nuclear Disarmament entitled, Malice in Blunderland. He was instrumental in the IPPNW's campaign in seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice questioning the legality of nuclear weapons. He died the very same year in which the IPPNW finally managed to gain a hearing at the International Court of Justice.
Erich Geiringer died in Wellington on 25 August 1995, and is survived by his wife Carol, his daughter Claudia and his sons Karl and Felix.
