Emil du Bois-Reymond
| Emil du Bois-Reymond | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
7 November 1818 Berlin, Germany |
| Died |
26 December 1896 (aged 78) Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields |
Physiology Electrophysiology |
| Known for | Nerve action potential |
| Influenced | Eduard Hitzig |
Emil du Bois-Reymond (7 November 1818 – 26 December 1896) was a German physician and physiologist, the discoverer of nerve action potential, and the father of experimental electrophysiology.
Du Bois-Reymond was born in Berlin, and spent his working life there. One of his younger brothers was the mathematician Paul du Bois-Reymond (1831–1889). The family was of Huguenot origin.
Educated first at the French College in Berlin, then at Neuchâtel, where his father had returned, Du Bois-Reymond entered in 1836 the University of Berlin. He seems to have been uncertain at first as to the topic of his studies, for he was a student of the renowned ecclesiastical historian August Neander, and dallied with geology, but eventually he began to study medicine, with such zeal and success as to attract the notice of Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858), a well-known teacher of anatomy and physiology.
Müller's earlier studies had been distinctly physiological, but his inclination, no less than his position as professor of anatomy as well as of physiology in the University of Berlin, caused him later to study of comparative anatomy, and this, aided by his interest in problems of general philosophy, gave his views of physiology a breadth and a depth which influenced the progress of that science in his day profoundly. He had, about the time when the young Du Bois-Reymond came to his lectures, published his Elements of Physiology, the dominant note of which may be said to be this:
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