Asim Kurjak, Pioneer of Obstetric Ultrasound, Dies at 85
The gynecologist and academician from Vranic near Kotor Varos has died at 85. He leaves behind an ultrasound school, a test that bears his name and several disputes.
Academician Asim Kurjak, a gynecologist who ran a clinic at Sveti Duh Hospital in Zagreb for decades, has died at 85. The news was published on Friday, October 23, 2026, after his death was confirmed to the Zagreb daily Jutarnji list. Sources give neither the place nor the cause of death.
Kurjak was born on September 13, 1942, in the village of Vranic in the Vrbanja valley near Kotor Varos, and built his professional life in Zagreb. Across the region he was regarded as one of the most cited physicians in prenatal medicine, and also as a man around whom academic and court disputes dragged on for years.
From Kotor Varos to London and Glasgow
He finished secondary medical school in Banjaluka and graduated in medicine in Zagreb in 1966. After his studies he returned to his home region and for a time served as director of the health center in Kotor Varos. He completed postgraduate studies in ultrasound diagnostics in London in 1972, and trained further in Glasgow under Ian Donald, the physician who laid the foundations for the use of ultrasound in obstetrics.
In the early 1970s ultrasound was a new technology: the images were crude, the machines large, the possibilities modest. Kurjak followed its development from hard-to-read scans to real-time imaging. He introduced transvaginal color Doppler, which shows the blood vessels of the uterus and ovaries at close range and is now a standard part of gynecological and prenatal diagnostics.
What does he leave behind?
Kurjak long headed the Clinic for Gynecology and Obstetrics at Sveti Duh Hospital, was a full professor at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine and served as president of the Croatian Academy of Medical Sciences. His publication record includes authoring or editing more than 120 books and more than 1,000 professional and scientific papers. The exact figure differs between sources, depending on the period counted.
Two institutions are tied to his name:
- 1981: in Dubrovnik he co-founded the international school of medical ultrasound named after Ian Donald
- 1984: he founded the association The Fetus as a Patient, built on the idea that an unborn child can be treated as a patient who can be diagnosed and whose development can be monitored before birth
His name is also attached to a test he presented in 2008. KANET is a test for assessing the neurological development of a fetus using 4D ultrasound, based on observing the movements and behavior of the fetus. According to Kurjak, the name was suggested by Japanese colleagues.
He never severed his ties with Bosnia and Herzegovina. He taught in Sarajevo and was professor emeritus at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, and in his last years he presided over the International Academy of Sciences and Arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Elmedin Konakovic awarded him a diplomatic passport in recognition of his contribution to science. He received honorary doctorates from universities in Barcelona, Budapest, Athens and Buenos Aires.
A collection of about 700 works
He collected art for about 45 years. He presented a collection of about 700 works, including many paintings by Vlaho Bukovac, in 2019 at the Art Pavilion in Zagreb. He summed up the relationship between medicine and art in a single sentence:
“We heal the body, and artists heal the spirit.”
N1 BiH carried the line from an earlier statement by Kurjak, in which he explained why his home holds paintings of women, mothers and children.
Disputes that followed his career
Kurjak’s biography cannot be retold without the disputes. In 2006 the British Medical Journal accused Kurjak of plagiarism, and the ethics committee of the Zagreb School of Medicine found plagiarism in two papers. Kurjak maintained that these were citation errors.
A second case concerned the death of a mother and her baby at Sveti Duh in 2002. In late 2007 Kurjak was sentenced, not finally, to eight months in prison for covering up a medical error, but the verdict never became final because the statute of limitations expired.
In a third proceeding, over allegedly unauthorized transplantation of egg cells into patients, he was charged together with his wife and two other physicians. All were acquitted, not finally, in January 2009, because the court did not find enough evidence of guilt.
His wife, Biserka Funduk Kurjak, is also a gynecologist.
