Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn

Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn was a Berlin physician and anatomist, born there on 5 September 1711 and died on 7 October 1756 at the age of 45. He was first intended for the church and studied theology at Halle and Jena, but followed his own inclination towards natural science and then studied medicine, taking his doctorate at Leiden in 1739 after studying under Boerhaave, Albinus and Gaub. The anatomical preparations he showed to the Royal Society in London led to his election as a member. Back in Berlin from 1740 he practised medicine, and he made his own microscopes, including special reflecting instruments for studying injected vessels. His 1745 work on the villi of the small intestine described the glandular structures of the small bowel lining that still carry his name, and he became famous for his finely made preparations of injected blood vessels, of which he left more than four hundred.