Asim Kurjak

Asim Kurjak was born on 13 September 1942 in Kotor Varoš, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He completed a secondary medical school in Banja Luka and went on to study medicine at the University of Zagreb, graduating in 1966.

He took postgraduate training in ultrasound diagnosis in London in 1972 and further training in Glasgow, the centre where obstetric ultrasound had been pioneered by Ian Donald. He completed his specialisation in gynaecology and obstetrics in Zagreb in 1973 and 1974, and in 1977 received his doctorate from the medical faculty in Belgrade for a thesis on combined ultrasound and biochemical assessment of fetal kidney function.

Kurjak worked first at the women's diseases and maternity clinic of the Zagreb university hospital. In 1979 he moved to the general hospital Dr. Josip Kajfeš, later Sveti Duh, where he built the gynaecology and obstetrics department into a university clinic. He headed the clinic until 2002 and led its ultrasound diagnosis unit from 1986 to 2002, remaining at the hospital until he retired in 2007. He became a professor at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in 1985 and was a visiting professor at many universities abroad.

His research focused on perinatal medicine, prenatal diagnosis and early placentation, ultrasound study of fetoplacental and uterine circulation and tumour angiogenesis, and he introduced an original technique of transvaginal colour Doppler. His many books, written alone or with colleagues, included Ultrazvuk u ginekologiji i opstetriciji (1974), Fetus kao pacijent (1991, later published in English as The Fetus as a Patient), Transvaginal Color Doppler (1991), Textbook of Perinatal Medicine (1998) and Atlas of Fetal Anomalies (1994). In all he wrote or edited more than 120 books and over a thousand scientific and professional papers.

He co-founded the Ian Donald Inter-University School of Medical Ultrasound at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik. He was president of the world federation The Fetus as a Patient from 1984, of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine from 1992, of the World Association of Perinatal Medicine from 1996 to 1998 and of the Croatian Academy of Medical Sciences from 2001 to 2004, and later president of the International Academy of Perinatal Medicine. From 2013 he was rector of the International University of Dubrovnik.

His honours included the Ruđer Bošković Award (1985), the European Association of Perinatal Medicine prize (2000), the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the face of Ruđer Bošković (2001), the William Liley prize of the Fetus as a Patient Society (1998), the Erich Saling Perinatal Prize (2012) and honorary doctorates from universities including Barcelona, Budapest, Athens and Buenos Aires.

His career was also marked by controversy. In 2006 the British Medical Journal accused him of plagiarising scientific papers; an ethics committee of the Zagreb School of Medicine found that he had plagiarised two papers, and in 2007 the national Committee for Ethics in Science and Higher Education reached the same conclusion. He rejected the accusations, saying the errors were in citation. In December 2007 he was convicted at first instance and sentenced to eight months in prison for covering up a medical error linked to the 2002 deaths of a mother and her baby at Sveti Duh; the verdict never became final because the absolute statute of limitations expired a month later. In January 2009 he, his wife and two other doctors were acquitted at first instance of charges of unlawful transfer of donor eggs, the court finding insufficient evidence.

Kurjak was married to Biserka Funduk Kurjak. He wrote on the ethical dilemmas of research on early embryos, and in a 2020 interview with Novi list he argued that there was no longer any doubt that the fetus is both a person and a patient, the idea behind his book Fetus kao pacijent and the international society he led.

Asim Kurjak died in his 85th year; his death was confirmed to Jutarnji list, which reported it on the morning of 23 October 2026, followed by Index.hr and other Croatian media. The exact date, place and cause of death were not made public, and funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Obituaries described him as one of the pioneers of ultrasound in Croatian gynaecology and obstetrics and an internationally recognised expert in prenatal diagnosis, while also recalling the plagiarism findings and court cases that shadowed the later part of his career.

Kurjak helped bring diagnostic ultrasound into Croatian obstetrics from the early 1970s and built Sveti Duh into a university clinic and a centre for international ultrasound training. Through the Ian Donald school in Dubrovnik, his textbooks and his leadership of European and world perinatal societies, he influenced the teaching of prenatal ultrasound and colour Doppler across Europe and beyond. His record also includes the plagiarism findings of 2006 and 2007, which became a reference case in discussions of scientific misconduct in Croatia.