(¤ 11.2.1865, † 1952) Ferdinand Zinsser was born in New York. School education in Wiesbaden. Ferdinand Zinsser studied at the universities of Bonn, Munich and Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in 1891. After the medical state examination, he worked at the Medical University Clinic in Leipzig under Hans Curschmann (1875-1950) and at the Dermatological University Clinic in Bern under Edmund Lesser (1852-1918) with whom he had moved to Bern.1894 Settlement in Cologne. 1903 Appointed head of the dermatological clinic at the then municipal hospitals in Cologne.
In 1904 he became lecturer in dermatology at the Academy of Practical Medicine in Cologne, and in 1908 professor. In 1919 he was appointed full professor of skin and venereal diseases at the newly founded University of Cologne. In 1931 he became emeritus professor. 1927/28 Elected rector of the university. In 1910, together with Harold Newton Cole, describer of dyskeratosis congenita (first description probably in 1903 by Lenglet). In 1931 he became emeritus professor. 1910 together with Harold Newton Cole describer of dyskeratosis congenita (first description probably 1903 by Lenglet).
Zinsser married his cousin Wilhelmine Tourelle and they had a daughter Augusta, called Gussi, born in 1895. Augusta married Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), then a widower and mayor of Cologne, in 1919. Augusta Adenauer died in March 1948, and in 1949 Konrad Adenauer became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.