Albert von Kölliker

Biography

Albert Kölliker was born in Zürich, Switzerland. His early education was carried on in Zürich, and he entered the university there in 1836. After two years, however, he moved to the University of Bonn, and later to that of Berlin, becoming a pupil of noted physiologists Johannes Peter Müller and of Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle. In 1841, he graduated in philosophy at Zürich, and in medicine at Heidelberg in 1842 The first academic post which he held was that of prosector of anatomy under Henle, but the tenure of this office was brief – in 1844 he returned to University of Zurich to occupy a chair as professor extraordinary of physiology and comparative anatomy. His stay here was also brief; in 1847 the University of Würzburg, attracted by his rising fame, offered him the post of professor of physiology and of microscopical and comparative anatomy. He accepted the appointment, and at Würzburg he remained thenceforth, refusing all offers tempting him to leave the quiet academic life of the Bavarian town, where he died.

Many of the numerous memoirs which he published, (including the very first paper he wrote) and which appeared in 1841, before he graduated, were on the structure of animals of the most varied kinds. Notable among these were his papers on the Medusae and allied creatures. His activity in this direction led him to make zoological excursions to the Mediterranean Sea and to the coasts of Scotland, as well as to undertake, conjointly with his friend Carl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, the editorship of the Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Zoologie, which, founded in 1848, continued under his hands to be one of the most important zoological periodicals.

His hand was one of the first to be x-rayed, by his friend Wilhelm Röntgen.