Julius Bernstein

Julius Bernstein ( born December 18, 1839 in Halle, † February 6, 1917 in Halle) was a German physiologist and Secret Medizinalrat.

Bernstein was the oldest of seven children of publicists and co-founder of the Berlin Jewish Reform Congregation Aaron Bernstein ( 1812-1884 ). He studied from 1857 at the University of Breslau under Rudolf Heidenhain and in Berlin with Emil Du Bois- Reymond. In 1862 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on muscle physiology. In 1864 he became an assistant to Hermann von Helmholtz at Heidelberg University.

Bernstein was a lecturer in 1870. Since 1872 he was the successor of Friedrich Goltz Professor at the Martin -Luther- University Halle- Wittenberg. Since 1875 he was a member of the Scholars Academy Leopoldina. In 1881 he founded the Institute for physiologist at the University of Halle, whose director he was and that now bears his name.

As significant contributions to the history of science are the Julius- Bernstein hypothesis ( 1868) and the membrane theory (1902 ).

His eldest son was the mathematician Felix Bernstein.

Also funded by the BMBF National Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience is named after Julius Bernstein.

Works

• Studies of the process of excitation in nerve and muscle systems, Heidelberg. Winter 1871
• The five senses of man. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1875
• The mechanical theory of life, their foundations and their successes. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1890
• Textbook of physiology of the animal organism, in speciellen of man. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1894
• Electro-biology: The study of the electrical processes in the organism on the basis of modern dargestellt.pdf file ( 15 MB), Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1912, accessed November 20, 2011