Otto Schirmer

Otto Wilhelm August Schirmer ( born December 13, 1864 in Greifswald, † May 6, 1917 in New York ) was a German ophthalmologist and high school teachers.

After leaving school in Greifswald Schirmer studied at the universities of Greifswald, Munich and Freiburg. In 1887 he received his doctorate with the work Experimental study on pure Linsencontusionen in Greifswald and habilitated in 1889 in Göttingen at Theodore of liver. In the years after Schirmer worked before he returned to Halle and Königsberg in 1893 to Greifswald.

There he took over in 1896 the Department of Ophthalmology of his father Rudolf Schirmer. In 1907 he was appointed professor in Kiel, but already changed in the same year at the University of Strasbourg. In 1909 he resigned from his teaching post in Strasbourg. Schirmer emigrated to the U.S. and settled in New York. Little is known about the reasons for his emigration. According to contemporary historians of medicine was Schirmer " not resigned of his own accord " ( Isidor Fischer). It should have probably not without his own fault, " been a " tragic (s) fall ( Julius Hirschberg ).

In New York he worked in several hospitals, including the Herman Knapp Memorial Eye Hospital.

The Schirmer test is named after him.