Ludwig, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 29 December 1816 Wittenhausen, Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland)

d. 23 April 1895 Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

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German physiologist, inventor of the kymograph for the measurement of blood pressure, early experimenter in tissue grafting.

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He graduated MD from Marburg and in 1846 was appointed Professor of Comparative Anatomy. He later held the Chairs of Anatomy and Physiology at Zurich, in 1849, and of Physiology and Zoology at Vienna, in 1855. In 1865 he was appointed to the Chair of Physiology at Leipzig and founded the Physiological Institute named after him.

Renowned as a teacher, who often published under his pupils' names, his field of research was wide-ranging and he was an inspiration to many future distinguished names. In 1847 he invented the kymograph, an instrument which permitted the recording of variations in blood pressure. He supplemented this in 1867 with the "Stromuhr", with which the volume of blood passing through a blood vessel could be measured. He was also much involved in the elucidation of kidney function, and the kidney tubules are named after him.

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Bibliography

1847, "Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Einflußes der Respirationsbewegungen auf den Blutlauf im Aortensystem" Arch. Anat. Physiol. wiss. Med.

1865, Die Physiologischen leistungen des Blutdrucks, Leipzig.

Further Reading

1852–6, Textbook of Human Physiology.

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