Rudolf Kobert

Rudolf Kobert (1854 to 1918) was a German pharmacologist and toxicologist, born in Bitterfeld. He graduated from the University of Halle in 1877 and then worked as an assistant to the physiologist Friedrich Goltz and the pharmacologist Oswald Schmiedeberg at Strasbourg. In 1887 he became professor of pharmacology, dietetics and the history of medicine at the Imperial University of Dorpat, where one of his students, Peter Hermann Stillmark, went on to found lectinology with a thesis on ricin. When the university was subjected to Russification he left in 1896, directed the Brehmer sanatorium at Gorbersdorf, and in 1899 took the chair of pharmacology, pharmacognosy, chemistry and the physiological history of medicine at Rostock, which he held until his death. His research concerned ergot alkaloids, scopolamine, saponins and various plant and animal poisons. He wrote widely read textbooks and edited the five volumes of historical studies from the Dorpat pharmacological institute, published between 1889 and 1896.