Otto Deiters

Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters was a German neuroanatomist, born in Bonn in 1834, who studied at the University of Bonn and spent most of his short career there. He died of typhoid fever in 1863 at the age of 29. His microscopic research on the brain and spinal cord produced the most comprehensive description of a nerve cell known at the time, identifying the axon, which he called the axis cylinder, and the dendrites, which he called protoplasmic processes. His name is attached to the lateral vestibular nucleus, known as the nucleus of Deiters, and to Deiters' cells of the cochlea. The anatomist Max Schultze edited and published his spinal cord work in 1865.