Emil Meirowsky graduated from the University of Koenigsberg, Germany, School of Medicine in 1901. He took postgraduate courses at the University of Bresslau, the University of Hanburg, and Sorbonne in Paris.

Meirowsky worked as a professor of dermatology at the University of Cologne School of Medicine and was a past president of the Cologne Medical Society, the Rhineland-Westfalen Society of Dermatologists, and the Cologne Dermatological Society. He was also the founder and first director of the first lupus hospital in Graudenz, East Prussia. The hospital did research on a tuberculosis disease of the skin.

Meirowsky first came to America in 1947 and lived in Memphis. He joined the faculty at Indiana University Medical School the same year, where he did cancer and virus research. Meirowsky moved back to Tennessee in 1953 and published 11 clinical and scientific texts, many dealing with his outstanding research work on pigment, life cycle of the syphillis germ, and etiology of birth marks and congenital malformation of skin. Meirowsky discovered the virus etiology of psoriasis. He passed away in 1960 in Nashville.