Franz von Rinecker

Franz von Rinecker was a German pharmacologist and physician, born at Schesslitz near Bamberg in 1811 and dying in 1883. He studied medicine at Munich and Würzburg, graduating in 1834, and in 1838 became professor of pharmacology at the University of Würzburg. There he trained or worked with many later well-known figures, among them Emil Kraepelin, Franz von Leydig, Ernst Haeckel and Carl Gerhardt, and he helped bring Albert von Kölliker and Rudolf Virchow to the medical faculty. With Leydig he created the physiological institute and he took part in founding the university pediatric clinic. In 1863 he became director of psychiatry at the Juliusspital, adding dermatology in 1872. He also worked to replace natural philosophy in the medical curriculum with more scientifically based studies.