Widukind Lenz (4 February 1919, Eichenau, Bavaria – 25 February 1995) was a distinguished German pediatrician, medical geneticist and dysmorphologist who was among the first to recognize the thalidomide syndrome in 1961 and alert the world to the dangers of limb and other malformations due to the mother's exposure to this drug during pregnancy.
In the ensuing years, Lenz did much important work on the thalidomide syndrome.
[3] From 1944 till 1948 Lenz worked as a physician in Luftwaffe hospitals during World War II and then in a prisoner-of-war camp in England.
After stints in biochemistry in Göttingen and medicine in Kiel, he became physician-in-chief of the Eppendorfer Kinderklinik in 1952 and was named to the chair of pediatrics at the University of Hamburg in 1961.
Fritz Lenz espoused eugenics and influenced the racial hygiene policies of the Third Reich.