Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann

Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann was a German physiologist, anatomist and philosopher, born in Leipzig in 1801, who specialized in the study of the nervous and optic systems. He studied medicine at Leipzig, took his doctorate in 1826, became professor extraordinary of zootomy there in 1834, and in 1837 went to Dorpat as professor of physiology, pathology and semiotics. He moved to Halle in 1843, took on the teaching of anatomy in 1854, and retired in 1872 after his fiftieth doctoral jubilee. In 1842 he showed that the sympathetic nerves are largely made up of medullated fibres arising from sympathetic and spinal ganglia, and he described features of gross anatomy including the canals that bear his name. He also contributed to psychophysics, working with his brother-in-law Gustav Theodor Fechner on the method of average error, and in 1864 reported that the threshold for distance discrimination rises with the reference distance. Philosophically he opposed materialism. His son Richard von Volkmann became a distinguished surgeon.