Researcher Into Nazi Motives Dies : Dr. Leo Alexander Noted for Code on Human Experiments

Dr. Leo Alexander, a psychiatrist and neurologist whose research disclosed that millions were murdered in World War II concentration camps because their Nazi guards were too “meek” to oppose authority, is dead.

Alexander, who wrote the postwar Nuremberg Code that established moral, ethical and legal principles relating to experiments on humans, was 79.

He died July 20 at a nursing home here.

As medical investigator for former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson and an aide to the chief counsel at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Alexander wrote the code after studying the actions of German SS troops and concentration camp guards.

He said they were “on the whole meek and over-polite fellows who committed inhuman crimes because they found themselves suspect by their superiors.”

Alexander also helped police solve the “Boston Strangler” case by hypnotizing a woman attacked by Albert DeSalvo. The victim was able to recall the color of DeSalvo’s clothing, helping lead to his arrest.

Alexander received his medical degree from the University of Vienna in Austria in 1929 and served his internship and residency in psychiatry at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.

He came to the United States in 1933, holding positions at Worcester State Hospital, Boston City Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Boston State Hospital before becoming associate professor of neuropsychiatry at Duke University Medical School in North Carolina in 1941.