A French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Gisela Pankow was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, on February 25, 1914, and died in Berlin on August 14, 1998. She came from a Christian democrat family that paid heavily for its active opposition to the Nazi regime. After obtaining degrees in mathematics, physics, geography, and philosophy at the University of Berlin, Pankow began studying medicine in Tübingen, where she became an assistant to Professor Ernst Kretschmer. She helped with his research in morpho-endocrinology and began to publish articles in the field.

Having arrived in Paris in 1950 with a grant to conduct research, she worked as an intern at the hospital of La Pitié under the direction of Jacques Decourt. She published articles in German and French. In February 1953 she obtained a doctorate in science from the University of Paris with a dissertation entitled "Les rapports métriques entre la base du crâne et la partie...