Robert Howard Kirschner
Authors: F. Charatan
Journal: BMJ (2002)

Forensic pathologist who investigated mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda

Robert H Kirschner was a forensic pathologist who was hooked on human rights work. His activities took him wherever torture, extra-judicial executions, and mass killings had occurred—to Central and South America, to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. One of his most prominent cases was the 1996 examination of four sites of mass graves near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where Serbs were thought to have slaughtered about 8000 Muslim men and boys. Kirschner worked for awfully long hours, in horrible conditions amid the stench of mass burial. His findings helped contribute to the 2001 conviction of General Radislav Krstic by the International Tribunal in the Hague on charges of genocide.

Kirschner's human rights odyssey began in 1985 when he joined a team formed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to investigate skeletal remains found after the “disappearance” of more than 20 000 people in Argentina. He helped collect evidence of widespread murder and torture, identified many of the bodies, and trained Argentine students in the techniques of forensic science. His evidence helped convict nine former junta members of human rights violations.


Kirschner was an internationally recognised authority on forensic pathology, human rights violations, police brutality, torture, and child abuse. He was a founding member of the faculty board of the human rights programme at the University of Chicago. In a recent court deposition, Kirschner said that he had performed more than 8000 autopsies, including approximately 1500 autopsies on victims of gunshot wounds. 



STATON R WINTER/AP


Robert Howard Kirschner was of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. His parents were schoolteachers who managed to pass on their principles of courage, justice, and freedom to him during the witchhunting McCarthy era of the 1950s. Already an activist as a student, Robert won a journalism award for an article he wrote for his campus newspaper arguing for the abolition of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, but the paper refused to publish it.

After qualifying at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, he completed residency training in pathology at the University of Chicago in 1971. He did two years' military service in the United States Public Health Service before joining the faculty at Chicago as an assistant professor in pathology. In 1978, he began to work for the newly created Cook County Medical Examiner's Office as a forensic pathologist, which allowed him to combine medicine with his legal interests.

The following year, while helping to identify the remains of the 273 people killed in the crash of American Airlines flight 191, he met Clyde Snow, a renowned forensic anthropologist. Snow inspired him to become involved in investigations around the world.

From 1985 to 2000 he was involved in 36 international human rights missions at the request of Physicians for Human Rights, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the AAAS. This was not without risk; he was arrested, detained, and interrogated by the Kenyan secret police in 1988 when he attended a hearing into the death of a man who died while in their custody.

Kirschner was also recognised for his work on child abuse. He was a founder of the child death and serious injury review team for Cook County, and a member of the advisory board of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Despite the grim nature of his work, he was invigorated rather than depressed. His wit and wisdom helped him become, in the words of the New York medical examiner Dr Michael Baden, “the conscience of forensic pathology.” 

In a 1996 interview, Dr Kirschner said that dealing with bodies was not the terrifying part of his work. “It's more trying to contemplate what goes through someone's mind that allows them to do this kind of thing,” he said.

He leaves a wife, Barbara, an authority on inflammatory bowel disease in children; three sons; and a granddaughter.

Robert Howard Kirschner, clinical associate departments of pathology and paediatrics, the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and forensic consultant to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (b Philadelphia 1940; q Philadelphia 1966), died from complications of renal cancer on 15 September 2002.