Ignaz Döllinger

Ignaz Döllinger (1770 to 1841) was a German medical doctor, anatomist and physiologist, born in Bamberg, where his father was a professor and a physician to the Prince-Bishop. He studied natural sciences and then medicine at Bamberg, Würzburg, Pavia and Vienna, took his doctorate in 1794 and worked briefly as a physician in Bamberg before becoming professor of physiology and general pathology there. In 1803 he was called to Würzburg as professor of anatomy and physiology, and in 1823 he moved to Munich, where he taught at what became the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. He was among the first to understand and treat medicine as a natural science, took a special interest in the early development of organisms, and taught students including Karl Ernst von Baer, Christian Heinrich von Pander and Louis Agassiz. He died in Munich in 1841.