Wenzel Gruber

Wenzel Leopold Gruber (1814 to 1890) was an Austrian anatomist, born in Krukanice, now part of Pernarec in the Czech Republic. He studied medicine at the University of Prague and, under his teacher Josef Hyrtl, developed into an outstanding anatomist. In 1847 he was called to the medical academy of St. Petersburg, where he served as first prosector to Nikolay Pirogov; after Pirogov resigned he took over the practical-anatomical institute in 1855 and became a full professor in 1858. He set up scientifically driven anatomy teaching in Russia against strong resistance and used the large number of human corpses available there to find important details, variations and pathological deviations in his research. He was elected a member of the Leopoldina in 1847 and wrote the first recorded mention of the foramen lacerum. He returned to Vienna in 1888 after more than forty years of teaching and died there in 1890. His publications include a nine-volume series of observations from human and comparative anatomy.