Background
Georg Meissner was born on November 19, 1829, in Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany to the family of a senior law-court official Adolf Meissner and Clara Dorothea Caroline Jacobine Grote.
Göttingen, Germany
Photo of Georg Meissner by Peter Matzen.
Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Meissner began the study of medicine at Göttingen in the summer of 1849. At the university, he had a fatherly friend and patron in Rudolf Wagner (1806-1864) who was a professor of physiology, comparative anatomy, and zoology. While still a student, Meissner took an active part in Wagner’s investigations in anatomy and, especially, in microscopy. Meissner became a doctor of medicine in Göttingen in 1852.
Georg Meissner was a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.
Georg Meissner was a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Georg Meissner was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Meissner began the study of medicine at Göttingen in the summer of 1849. At the university, he had a fatherly friend and patron in Rudolf Wagner (1806-1864) who was a professor of physiology, comparative anatomy, and zoology. While still a student, Meissner took an active part in Wagner’s investigations in anatomy and, especially, in microscopy. Meissner became a doctor of medicine in Göttingen in 1852.
Georg Meissner was a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.
Georg Meissner was a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Georg Meissner was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
https://www.amazon.com/Untersuchungen-%C3%BCber-den-Sauerstoff-German/dp/1146138156/?tag=2022091-20
1683
https://www.amazon.com/Beitr%C3%A4ge-zur-physiologie-sehorgans-German/dp/B00378L0F6/?tag=2022091-20
1854
https://www.amazon.com/Bericht-Fortschritte-Anotomie-Physiologie-1856-71/dp/027090722X/?tag=2022091-20
1871
https://www.amazon.com/Georg-Meissners-Briefe-Jacob-Universitatsbibliothek/dp/3525852614/?tag=2022091-20
1975
anatomist educator physiologist scientist
Georg Meissner was born on November 19, 1829, in Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany to the family of a senior law-court official Adolf Meissner and Clara Dorothea Caroline Jacobine Grote.
As a student Meissner displayed only average talents and it was only after having graduated from high-school - die Abitur - he decided to study medicine. He left school in the spring of 1849 and began the study of medicine at Göttingen in the summer of that year. At the university, he had a fatherly friend and patron in Rudolf Wagner (1806-1864) who was a professor of physiology, comparative anatomy, and zoology. While still a student, Meissner took an active part in Wagner’s investigations in anatomy and, especially, in microscopy.
Meissner became a doctor of medicine in Göttingen in 1852 and, after finishing his studies in the spring of 1853, he went to Berlin to attend the lectures of Johannes Müller and Johann Lukas Schönlein (1793-1864). In April 1853 he left for Munich to attend the lectures of Ernst von Siebold (1804-1885), Emil Harless (1820-1862), and Justus von Liebig (1803-1873).
In the autumn of 1851, Meissner and Billroth accompanied Wagner on a research expedition to Trieste, in order to investigate the origins and endings of the nerves in the torpedo fish. Meissner provided the drawings, which were printed by Wagner in hiss Icones physiologicae. The expedition was also concerned with analyzing the electrical organ of the torpedo. At Trieste, Meissner became acquainted with Johannes Müller (1801-1858) whom he esteemed highly. It was also in 1851 that Meissner conducted intensive comparative microscopic investigations on the cells and fibres of the nervus acusticus.
In 1852, Meissner studied the tactile corpuscles of the skin which today bear his name and conceived that pressure changes triggered neural responses. The results were first published under the names of Wagner and Meissner; but in Meissner’s doctoral thesis the same results were again published, this time under his name alone, as Beiträge zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Haut (Leipzig, 1853), and fierce controversy over priority ensued between Wagner and Meissner.
In August 1853 in Munich Meissner received a letter from Rudolf Wagner, who claimed the discovery of the tactile cells for his own and demanded a public resolution of the matter. Meissner rejected this proposal politely but firmly, and bad feelings between teacher and pupils persisted until 1859.
In 1855, aged twenty-six, Meissner was appointed a full professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Basel. In 1857 he was called to the University of Freiburg im Breisgau as professor of physiology, zoology, and histology.
In 1859 Wagner and Meissner were reconciled. Wagner, who until then had held the joint chair of physiology, comparative anatomy, and zoology, turned over his duties in physiology to Meissner, who thus became the first occupant of the separate chair of physiology at Göttingen. He took office after the Easter of 1860 and held the chair until 1901 when he retired. He spent the rest of his life in Göttingen.
Meissner achieved considerable fame for his development of a technique for preserving whole organs without the use of disinfectants. This involved the employment of aseptic surgery to remove the particular organ and the use of heat sterilization of the containers and enabled him to preserve these organs without putrefaction for years. This work was reported by a colleague, Anton Julius Friedrich Rosenbach (1842-1923) although he himself had presented his findings at a number of scientific meetings.
After 1858, Meissner wrote largely on physiological-chemical problems. He was mainly concerned with the nature and the breakdown of proteins into smaller protein components in the digestive system. The results of his investigations, undertaken alone as well as with his collaborators, were published in Zeitschrift für rationale Medicin, edited by his friend, the famous anatomist Jakob Henle (1809-1885).
Meissner’s experiments on protein failed to meet with recognition. He was so offended that after 1869 he published nothing more under his own name. His collaborators included Carl Büttner, Friedrich Jolly, Heinrich Boruttau, Otto Weiss, and Karl Flügge. The bacteriologist Robert Koch was among his pupils.
Meissner retired as head of the physiological institute in 1900, renounced his academic activity in 1902, and died in 1905. Besides medical works, he wrote popular medicine and science, as well as short stories.
Georg Meissner is best known for his descriptions of the enteric submucous neural plexus and the tactile corpuscles in the skin that register the sense of touch, both in 1853 and both now bearing his name (Meissner's corpuscles and Meissner's plexus). Throughout his career, he made notable contributions to the developmental anatomy of the nervous system. In the field of biochemistry, he elucidated the formation of urea and uric acid.
In 1861 Meissner constructed a new electrometer, a mirror galvanometer. The ensuing electrophysiological investigations led him to propose a new theory concerning the generation of electric potentials through the deformation of biological tissues. This suggestion provoked a devastating critique in 1867 by the famous Berlin physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896), the Nestor of electrophysiology.
Georg Meissner was a member of a number of honorary learning institutions including the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
At Göttingen Meissner became a lifelong friend of Theodor Billroth. The two were united by their great love for music and by their interest in microscopic anatomy. Meissner was not very sociable. His lectures on physiology, which were illustrated by many experiments, were always well prepared and vivid. Here his talent for drawing, especially for microscopic drawings, served him well.
Physical Characteristics: Meissner suffered from asthma which was one of the reasons for his retirement in 1901.
At Freiburg, Georg Meissner married Maria von Kobell, the daughter of the mineralogist and poet Franz Ritter von Kobel. They had two sons. His son, Paul Meissner, born in 1868, was a dermatologist.
