Albrecht von Haller

Albrecht von Haller (1708 to 1777), also called Albertus de Haller, was a Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist, encyclopedist, bibliographer and poet, born into an old family of Bern. He studied medicine at Tubingen and then at Leiden under Herman Boerhaave, graduating in 1727, and he later learned from teachers in London, Paris and Basel. He is sometimes called the father of modern physiology. In a 1752 thesis at the University of Göttingen he separated the "sensibility" of nerves from the "irritability" of muscle fibre, and in 1757 he ran a well known series of experiments distinguishing nerve impulses from muscular contraction. His journeys through the Alps also gave rise to a plant collection that became the basis of his work on the flora of Switzerland, and to his poem Die Alpen. He practised as a physician in Bern from 1729 while devoting his best energies to anatomical and botanical research.