In 1939 he fled with his family to Soviet territory where they spent two years imprisoned in the Gulag Nuziyary and later settled in Kazakhstan.
He began medical studies which he later continued in Frankfurt am Main and, following emigration to the United States in 1948, at Iowa University.
Afterwards he joined the Texas Medical Center and worked at the Department of Reproductive Medicine and Biology.
He performed pioneering work in many aspects of sperm function, fertility preservation, physical and chemical gonadotoxic agents, as well as in the endocrine treatment of women with ovulatory dysfunction.
He published more than 400 medical research papers and trained more than 50 postdoctoral fellows from the United States and abroad.