Carl Bergmann (anatomist)

Carl Bergmann was a German anatomist, physiologist and biologist, born in Göttingen in 1814. He studied medicine and natural sciences at Göttingen and Würzburg, took his medical doctorate at Göttingen in 1838 and later served as a full professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Rostock, where he also sat on the medical commission. He is remembered for Bergmann's rule, his 1847 account of how animals of larger size are found in colder environments, and for arguing in 1854 that the rods and cones of the retina are the cells that convert light into neural signals. He also coined the terms fovea centralis, homoiothermic and poikilothermic. He died in Geneva in 1865.