Eugene de Savitsch (1902 - 1959) doctor, sexologist.

De Savitsch was born in St Petersburg, the son of a prominent judge. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, he fled to Japan.

Later he moved to the United States where he struggled against tuberculosis and poverty to become a doctor. After graduation from the University of Chicago, he studied at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Bunge Institute in Antwerp, from where he went to do field work on sleeping sickness in the Belgian Congo. Later he worked in Washington, D.C..

He published his autobiography at the age of 37.

His major work with transgender persons was his 1958, Homosexuality, Transvestism and Change of Sex, where he gives the details of Arlette Leber. He declares himself in favour of decriminalization of consensual sexual activity, but is more approving of transsexuality (described as inversion) than of homosexuality.

However he seemed to recognize sex changes as from male to female only. He commented on Nicholas de Raylan in his book, but as a lesbian transvestite, not as a female-to-male man.

• “Adventurous Doctor”. Time. Jul 01, 1940. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,764154,00.html.
• Eugene de Savitsch. In search of complications, an autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1940.
• Eugene de Savitsch. Homosexuality, Transvestism and Change of Sex. Springfield Ill: Charles C. Thomas 1958.