Adolf Eugen Fick

Adolf Eugen Fick was a German-born physician and physiologist, born on 3 September 1829 and died on 21 August 1901. He began by studying mathematics and physics before realising that he had an aptitude for medicine, and he earned his doctorate in medicine from the University of Marburg in 1851, after which he worked as a prosector. In 1855 he introduced Fick's laws of diffusion, which govern the diffusion of a gas across a fluid membrane, and he managed to publish the law in a form that served physiology and physics alike. In 1870 he was the first to measure cardiac output, using what is now called the Fick principle, and his work led to the direct Fick method for measuring cardiac output. His nephew, Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick, invented the contact lens. The source article is brief, so this entry records only what it supports about his training, his diffusion laws and his cardiac output principle.