Background
Karl Asmund Rudolphi was born on July 14, 1771, in Stockholm to German parents. He was the son of the vice-rector of the German school in Stockholm.
Karl Asmund Rudolphi, a Swedish-born naturalist, who is credited with being the "father of helminthology".
Karl Asmund Rudolphi. Stipple engraving by F. Bolt, 1820, after A. Temmel.
Karl Asmund Rudolphi, 14 July 1771 – 29 November 1832.
University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
Rudolphi studied philosophy, natural sciences, and medicine at Greifswald, from which he graduated in philosophy in 1793 and in medicine, with a dissertation on intestinal worms, in 1794.
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1826
anatomist biologist physician scientist Helminthologist
Karl Asmund Rudolphi was born on July 14, 1771, in Stockholm to German parents. He was the son of the vice-rector of the German school in Stockholm.
Rudolphi spent his early years in the German school in Stockholm. He studied philosophy, natural sciences, and medicine at Greifswald, from which he graduated in philosophy in 1793 and in medicine, with a dissertation on intestinal worms, in 1794. In 1801, he finished a course at the Berlin Veterinary School.
In 1801, having finished a course at the Berlin Veterinary School, Rudolphi returned to Greifswald, first as a professor in the veterinary institute, then, in 1808, as professor of medicine in the medical faculty. In 1810 he was appointed to the chair of anatomy and physiology at the newly established University of Berlin; he became one of the most influential members of the university and remained there for the rest of his life.
Some of Rudolphi's early work was in botany. In 1805 he shared an award from the Gottingen science society with his friend H. F. Link, with whom he established a new direction in the study of plant morphology. Rudolphi carried out a careful examination of all parts of a number of species of plants at all stages of their growth and concluded that without exception each plant consists wholly of cellular tissue in the early stages of its development and in large part of cellular tissue at the later stages of its growth. This constituted an important first step toward the recognition of the cell as the basic unit of the structure of plants. Rudolphi was, on the other hand, criticized for his erroneous assertion that mushrooms differ so greatly in their structure from other plants that they do not belong to the plant kingdom.
Among Rudolphi’s works in comparative anatomy, his studies of intestinal villi in vertebrates were especially important because they constituted both a contribution toward Bichat’s tissue theory and a demonstration of the utility of the microscope in the investigation of animal morphology. These examinations were among the first in the new field of comparative histology.
Rudolphi’s textbook on physiology, Grundriss der Physiologie, was also widely influential, although he had completed only two volumes at the time of his death. It was based upon Rudolphi’s own experience, particularly in comparative anatomy, and served as a useful counterforce to the romantic and speculative physiology then prevailing in Germany. (Muller even mentioned the brevity with which Rudolphi treated any subject to which he could not add a critical comment or new information at first hand.) In the general section of his textbook, Rudolphi took an anthropological view of physiology, stressing the differences between man and the great apes. His simple and concise grouping of tissues was valuable. He gave a clear and realistic account of the functions of various parts of the body, which in general agreed with modern conceptions.
(Volume 3)
1828(Volume 1)
1828(Volume 2)
1828Rudolphi repudiated the fantastic conceptions of life put forward by Schelling and Oken, and likewise dismissed speculations about symmetry and Stahl s notion of the soul as being the cause of bodily phenomena. The idea of the soul or mind, he pointed out, does not contribute to the understanding of physiology; in a study of the cerebral cavities, he cited the entire brain as being the organ of intelligence - in opposition to Sommering, who located intellect in the cerebrospinal fluid - and indicated that such complex processes as thought and reasoning must arise from a complex structure.
Although he rejected many of the more mystical notions of science - including Gall’s phrenology, Blumenbach’s nisus formativus, and Cuvier’s theory of catastrophes - Rudolphi supported the “animal chemistry” of Berzelius, with whom he was in the personal touch, and included his discoveries and views in his own physiology.
Rudolphi was to some degree hampered in his physiological investigations by his reluctance to perform experiments upon living animals. He advocated more humane experimentation and based most of his own work on his studies in comparative anatomy, emphasizing the relationships between structure and function. He stressed the importance of chemistry as well and insisted upon the primary role of the exact sciences in medical training and practice, thereby giving impetus to the inductive and empirical physiology and medicine that had begun to develop at the University of Berlin.
He nonetheless believed that parasites are generated by disease in the body of the host, even though his predecessor P. S. Pallas had tried to demonstrate that their eggs enter the body of the host from outside. And although his work on helminthology was widely influential, Rudolphi’s attempt at more general zoological classification was both unsuccessful and soon forgotten.
In 1816, Rudolphi was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Karl Rudolphi was an inspiring teacher and was often of aid to younger scientists, both in Germany and abroad.