Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger

Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger was a German physiologist, born in Hanau in 1829 and died in Bonn in 1910. He began by studying law at Berlin University before turning to medicine, and he took his doctorate at Marburg in 1853 after working in Berlin as an assistant to Emil du Bois-Reymond. In 1859 he became professor of physiology at the University of Bonn, where he remained for the rest of his career and taught students including Nathan Zuntz and Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz. His research covered embryological, respiratory, sensory and electrophysiology, and his work on the electrical stimulation of nerves and its relation to muscular contraction gave rise to the eponymous Pflüger's law. He showed that respiration takes place in the peripheral tissues rather than in the blood, studied glycogen, protein metabolism and the regulation of body temperature, and in 1868 founded the journal Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie des Menschen und der Thiere, now Pflügers Archiv, which became the most influential physiology journal in Germany.