Francis Kiernan

Francis Kiernan ( born October 2, 1800 Ireland, † December 31, 1874 in London) was a British anatomist and physician who developed the concept of the classical liver lobule.

Life

Kiernan was the eldest of four children in a family of doctors in Ireland to the world. During his childhood the family moved to England. Kiernan attended college in Hertfordshire. After schooling, he began a surgical- anatomical studies at London's St Bartholomew 's Hospital. 1825 Kiernan became a member of the British Royal College of Surgeons.

Kiernan was elected in 1834 a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1836 he was awarded for his histological work on the fine structure of the liver with the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. 1837 Kiernan was a member of the founding of the new London University Senate. There he taught anatomy and physiology. In 1850 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and in 1864 vice-president.

Work

Kiernan was particularly known for his work on the functional structure of the liver. On the basis of pig livers, he developed the even today in many textbooks described concept of hexagonal classic Leberläppen ( lobulus hepatic ) as anatomical and functional unit of the liver. The space around the Glissonsche Triassic is in the English jargon often than Kiernan 's space designated ( German: sometimes Kiernan - triangle).

The concept of the liver lobules lingered up to the present day, although described by Kiernan in pigs clear anatomical limitation in humans and other mammalian species are absent. Only in the 1950s showed Elias inter alia, that the sharp bindegewebliche limiting the pig is a degeneration phenomenon, which is not found so in piglets.