Karl Hecker (8 May 1827 – 14 December 1882) was a German gynecologist and obstetrician born in Berlin. He was the only son of medical historian Justus Hecker (1795–1850). He studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris and Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1848 from Berlin. In 1851 he became an assistant at the clinic of obstetrics at the Berlin-Charité under Dietrich Wilhelm Heinrich Busch (1788–1858). Here he gained his habilitation in 1853 with a thesis involving retroverted gravid uterus (De retroversione uteri gravidi).