Manfred Porkert

Manfred B. Porkert, born 1933 in the Czech Republic, had received his Ph.D. degree in Chinese studies at the Paris Sorbonne in 1957, in 1969, his Professor's thesis ("Habilitation") was accepted at Munich University (Germany) by a joint committee of the Medical and Arts Faculties. After serving there as reader and professor of Chinese studies including the theoretical foundations of Chinese Medicine until 1995, he is now Professor emeritus of that University. The author has served as visiting professor at the C. G. Jung Institute of Zurich (1961), at the Paris Medical University René Déscartes (during the Winter term of 1977/78), at the Université Nîmes-Montpellier, and he has extensively lectured at academic Institutions in Europe, Asia (China, Japan, Pakistan, South-East-Asia), Australia, Russia and North America; also, between 1979 and 1987, he had contributed lectures to the ERANOS-Sessions of Ascona. He is founder and honorary president of the International Chinese Medicine Society (SMS), and, since 1989, is Executive-Editor-in-Chief of the International Normative Dictionary of Chinese Medicine (INDCM) of the China Academy of Chinese Medicine, Beijing. Since the Fifties, he has published some 400-odd essays and translations on topics of Chinese medicine, Chinese science and Chinese literature and a comprehensive line of textbooks on all major aspects of Chinese medicine (diagnostics, pharmacology, prescriptions, acu-moxi-therapy, premoprehension (= manual therapy), as well as a number of book-length translations and books for the general reader. This work has originally been accomplished in German, English and French; yet individual texts have also been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Swedish, Italian and Spanish.