Karl Friedrich Meyer

Karl Friedrich Meyer (19 May 1884 – 27 April 1974) was an American scientist of Swiss origin. He was one of the most prodigious scientists in many areas of infectious diseases in man and animals, the ecology of pathogens, epidemiology and public health^[1-6]. Some called him the “Pasteur of the 20th century”.

Meyer was born in Basel (Switzerland) to Theodor Meyer, 1852–1934, (a „Meyer zum Pfeil”), international cigar merchant, and Sophie, née Lichtenhahn, teacher, 1857-1936. Karl Friedrich had two younger sisters.

Meyer began his studies in 1902 at the University of Basel and soon moved to the University of Zurich where he concentrated on biology, zoology, histology, and laboratory techniques. He was greatly fostered by Heinrich Zangger, professor of comparative anatomy (and later the first professor of Medical Law in Zurich), who sent him to work with leading scientists in Munich and Bern. Meyer was deeply impressed and influenced by Zangger's social consciousness. He received a doctorate of veterinary medicine in 1909 from the University of Zurich. – Later, in 1924, Meyer spent a sabbatical leave from the University of California in Zurich and obtained a Ph.D. in Bacteriology from the University of Zurich.

Meyer found his first employment in South Africa. The Transvaal Department of Agriculture in the (then) Union of South Africa had just established a large, special Institute devoted to research in public health and farm animal diseases, the latter being important for the economy of the country. The first director of the institute was another Swiss veterinarian, Arnold Theiler (father of the Nobel prize winner Max Theiler), famous for having successfully combated the so-called rinderpest, African horse sickness, and many other viral and bacterial infections of livestock.

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