Michael Obladen, MD, PhD (1944-)
Michael Obladen, MD, PhD is a German neonatologist who stands as one of the most influential figures in the development of the specialty in Europe.
Dr. Obladen was born on July 21, 1944 in Wűrzburg, Germany during World War II and grew up in Mannheim, with three younger siblings. He studied medicine and philosophy at the Universities of Würzburg, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg — where his philosophy teachers included Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas — graduating MD from Heidelberg in 1969. After a pediatric residency at the University Children’s Hospital in Heidelberg, he completed a research fellowship in neonatology in Louis Gluck‘s group at the University of California, San Diego in 1975–1976, earning a diploma in neonatology there.
After his return to Germany, he received his PhD and habilitation at Heidelberg in 1977. He held faculty and leadership positions at Heidelberg, Tübingen, and Bochum before becoming Director of Neonatology at the Free University of Berlin (West) from 1986 to 1995, and then Director of the Department of Neonatology at Hospital of the Charité, University Medicine Berlin — Germany’s largest neonatology department — and professor at the Humboldt University from 1995 until his retirement in 2007 . He has been Professor Emeritus at Hospital of the Charité since 2008.
Since 1970, Obladen has been a driving force in the research and clinical implementation of neonatology in Germany and Europe, setting standards for newborn intensive care, advocating for the establishment of perinatal centers, and playing a key role in establishing neonatology as a recognized pediatric subspecialty in Germany. His research has spanned surfactant deficiency and RDS treatment, erythropoietin use for anemia of prematurity, and neuroprotection in perinatal brain injury. His broad and successful scientific work is reflected in over 250 publications listed in PubMed. He is the co-founder of the first German-language textbook of neonatal intensive care and has been the editor of this standard work for more than 45 years, now in its 10th edition and translated in several languages.
In retirement, Obladen turned his energies toward the cultural and medical history of the newborn. Over 50 years he has compiled sources on neonatal history, culminating in his Oxford Textbook of The Newborn: A Cultural and Medical History (Oxford University Press, 2021), a 3,000-year survey of the newborn’s place in medicine and society. He also produced a well-regarded series of historical articles on topics such as neonatal resuscitation and birth asphyxia.
Dr. Obladen served as President of the German Society of Neonatology in 1989, received the Maternité Prize of the German Society of Perinatal Medicine in 1996, and was named an honorary member of the German Society of Neonatology in 2007.
- Maier RF, Speer CP. Michael Obladen: Promoter of Clinical, Scientific, and Academic Neonatology in Germany and Europe. Neonatology. 2024;121(5):544-546. doi: 10.1159/000538813. Epub 2024 May 8. PMID: 38718767.
- Michael Obladen’s web site and C.V. https://michaelobladen.de/en/index.html
Textbooks
- Maier RF, Obladen M, Stiller B, Zemlin M (eds.). Obladens Neugeborenen-Intensivmedizin: Evidenz und Erfahrung. 10th ed. Berlin: Springer; 2023. ISBN 978-3-662-66571-8. (Standard German NICU reference, now in its 10th edition)
- Wille L, Obladen M. Neonatal Intensive Care: Principles and Guidelines. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer; 1981. (English translation of an earlier edition of the foundational textbook, now quite outdated)
- Obladen M. Oxford Textbook of The Newborn: A Cultural and Medical History. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2021. ISBN 978-0-19-885480-7.
Last Updated on 04/03/26