Albert Thierfelder

Albert Thierfelder (Ferdinand Albert Thierfelder, 1842 to 1908) was a German pathologist born in Meissen. He came from a medical family: his father was a city physician and an older brother was an internist. He studied medicine at the universities of Rostock and Leipzig and earned his doctorate in 1870 with a dissertation on adenoma of the sweat glands. After several years as an assistant at the pathology institute in Leipzig he held the post of full professor of anatomic pathology at Rostock from 1876 until his death in 1908, and among his better known assistants there was the pathologist Otto Lubarsch. He also chaired the Natural History Society of Rostock in 1884 and 1885. Thierfelder is best remembered as the author of the Atlas der Pathologischen Histologie, which appeared in seven parts between 1872 and 1881 and described the microscopic appearance of diseased tissue in the airways and lungs, the digestive tract, the liver, pancreas and salivary glands, the serous membranes and joints, the bones and the heart and blood vessels.