Rudolf Robert Maier

Rudolf Robert Maier (9 April 1824 to 7 November 1888) was a German pathologist, a native of Freiburg im Breisgau. He studied medicine at the University of Freiburg, where one of his instructors was the orthopedist Louis Stromeyer, and furthered his training in Vienna with Carl Rokitansky, Joseph Hyrtl and Josef Skoda, and in Würzburg under Rudolf Virchow. He returned to Freiburg, became an associate professor in 1859, later attained a full professorship, and in 1864 founded the first institute of pathological anatomy there. With Adolf Kussmaul he gave the first comprehensive description of periarteritis nodosa, a condition sometimes called Kussmaul-Maier disease, in the inaugural edition of the journal Deutsches Archiv für klinische Medicin. He died in 1888 following a massive goiter disease with bronchoconstriction.