Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck

Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck was a German surgeon, ophthalmologist and anatomist, a native of Horneburg, born on 5 December 1776 and died on 24 January 1851. He studied medicine at the University of Jena and in 1802 received his habilitation at Göttingen under August Gottlieb Richter. He became an associate professor in 1804, three years later founded his own institute for surgery and ophthalmology, and in 1814 was appointed full professor at Göttingen and general surgeon of the Hanoverian Army. He taught there for nearly fifty years, and his pupils included the surgeon Louis Stromeyer and his nephew Bernhard von Langenbeck. He was considered one of the better surgeons of the first half of the nineteenth century, known for speed and precision in amputations, and his writings include an anatomical handbook of 1806 and the eight volumes of Icones anatomicae. He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1845.