John Zachariah Laurence

John Zachariah Laurence (1829 to 18 July 1870) was an English ophthalmologist who practised medicine in London. Born into a middle-class Jewish family whose forebear had moved from Bohemia, he founded the South London Ophthalmic Hospital in 1857, which later became known as the Royal Eye Hospital. In 1860 he was one of four medical staff who founded the Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic at Queen Square, now the National Hospital. In 1864 he founded and edited the Ophthalmic Review, the first British journal devoted to ophthalmology, and he is credited with promoting the use of the ophthalmoscope in England. His 1866 description of a syndrome of retinitis pigmentosa, progressive blindness, intellectual disability, stunted stature and hypogonadism survives in the eponym Laurence-Moon syndrome, shared with his colleague Robert Charles Moon. His work was undervalued by his contemporaries.