Ludwig Edinger

Ludwig Edinger ( born April 13, 1855 in Worms, † January 26, 1918 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a neurologist and brain researcher in 1912 one of the co-signatories of the Foundation Treaty establishing the University of Frankfurt am Main ( opened in 1914 ). In the same year he was appointed by the King of Prussia professor of neurology - the first researcher in Germany. His almost -forgotten accomplishments was found by comparative anatomical studies in the human brain " old" and " newly acquired " distinguished sections to have ( cf. telencephalon " Palaeencephalon ", " Neencephalon " ) belongs.

Career

Ludwig Edinger was of Jewish descent and grew up in Worms, his father was a successful textile merchant, and Democrat member of the Landtag of Hesse- Darmstadt, which in origin was not ashamed of humble, but back in 1873 (in vain ) entered for the free education and various welfare institutions established. His mother Julie was the daughter of a major Karlsruhe doctor. Ludwig Edinger studied from 1872-1877 medicine in Heidelberg and Strasbourg, but turned only in his work as a medical assistant (1877-1882) in casting the neurology, which he also made the subject of his Habilitation ( 1881), and because of it a lectureship obtained. After working in Berlin, Leipzig and Paris, he settled in 1883 in Frankfurt am Main as " Practischer doctor and specialist in Neurology " down. "I was almost the first in Germany who dared this special designation ," he recalled.

On the initiative of the Edinger elsewhere affected by anti-Semitism pathologist Carl Weigert director of the Dr. Senckenberg Anatomy in Frankfurt am Main in 1885 appointed. Weigert was replaced by his friend Edinger will be a first a job in this institute. But until 1902 Edinger received in the building its own space for its neurological department, thus the " Dr. Senckenberg Neurological Institute " became. The following year he was officially appointed director of the Institute founded by him, which he continued to develop steadily. Although the brain researchers funded the institute private, the Senckenberg Foundation afraid additional substantive burdens and therefore solved after long quarrels 1908/ 09 the binding. But soon after Edinger could connect the Neurological Institute at the newly founded University of Frankfurt. In his letter of appointment as professor was, however, also expressly stated that he had his institute continues to entertain out of pocket. It was made ​​possible, inter alia, because he was married to Anna Goldschmidt, the daughter of a long-established Jewish banking family in Frankfurt since 1886 and this had in 1906 started a million inheritance.

On January 26, 1918 Ludwig Edinger died unexpectedly of heart failure. He was buried at Frankfurt 's main cemetery ( Won II GG 17a). Even after his death, he was a brain scientist to its ultimate consequences: He had decreed that his brain should be dissected in his institute. The continuation of his Neurological Institute in 1917 backed by the establishment of a foundation Edinger. The Ludwig Edinger Foundation is one that - now also the name of its founder bearing - Neurological Institute at the Hospital of the Goethe University in Frankfurt today; in the field of medicine it is a " special institution legal nature ".

Research Topics

Initially at domestic kitchen table in Frankfurt, since his academic career had been denied at a German university as a Jew because of to 1882/83 resurgent anti-Semitism first Edinger thin sections prepared from brains of stillborn human fetuses and began so in secret with his anatomical basic research, which was pioneering in neurology. First results presented Edinger 1884 the Medical Association ago, in ten lectures on the construction of the human brain, which he published shortly afterwards in book form. He was given this work abruptly in international scientific circles known as an expert on the anatomy of the human brain and its development during the embryonic phase. Soon he expanded his studies from the front and diencephalon of sharks, amphibians, reptiles and birds and was able to trace the evolution of the brain during evolution. Edinger idea was to associate through a detailed comparison of the brain in the evolutionary ascending animal scale individual parts of the brain defined services.

By Ludwig Edinger the first color panels come with cross-sections through the brains of different animal phyla - color plates that decorate in a similar way today every textbook on brain anatomy. He discovered almost daily new, unknown structures; his most important discoveries related to the course of the pain pathway and the nucleus accessory nerve oculomotorii ( Edinger - Westphal nucleus), which is the origin of the mainland of the parasympathetic nerve fibers of the third cranial nerve ( oculomotor nerve ), which controls the pupillary reflex and thus the adaptation of the eye. His fame was so great that, for example, Korbinian Brodmann, who conducted the internationally accepted classification of the cerebral cortex, for example, assured the final naming of the consent Edinger.

Ludwig Edinger but did not leave it in purely anatomical studies, but also turned his interest in comparative psychology and thus became a pioneer of animal psychology, from which emerged the modern behavioral biology. He tried to be explained by the structure of the brain function and could, among other things demonstrate that the researchers had previously always assumed by man and its sensory capabilities of sensations when you examine the animals. Edinger, however, showed that many animals to certain stimuli that reason alone can not respond because they do not possess suitable for the stimulus processing structures in the brain. He was the first researcher to recognize that fish and amphibians longer can be considered " deaf " is not further ado, because they do not connect with a bell for anatomical reasons, we connect people with such an acoustic stimulus. Edinger led the differences in the behavior of higher animals so back to the development of additional parts of the brain.

Many of his findings are still valid today, but speak more recent research results that the "old" have taken on brain structures such as the birds in the course of evolution, functions, the cerebrum is responsible for the in mammals.

His daughter Tilly Edinger was the founder of the " Paläoneurologie " in Germany.

Works

• Course of My Life. Memories of a Frankfurt physician and neuroscientist, Kramer, Oberursel 2005, ISBN 3-7829-0561- X