Karl Bogislaus Reichert

Karl Bogislaus Reichert was a German anatomist, embryologist and histologist, born in Rastenburg in East Prussia in 1811. He studied at Königsberg under the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer and then in Berlin under Friedrich Schlemm and Johannes Peter Müller, and in 1836 took his doctorate with a dissertation on the gill arches of vertebrate embryos. After working at the Charité and as an assistant and prosector at the University of Berlin, he took the chair of anatomy at Dorpat in 1843, succeeded Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold as professor of physiology at Breslau ten years later, and in 1858 returned to Berlin as professor of anatomy in succession to Müller. He is remembered for his embryological work and for early research bearing on cell theory. With Ernst Gaupp he gave his name to the Reichert-Gaupp theory of the origin of the mammalian ear ossicles, and Reichert's cartilage in the second branchial arch is also named for him. He died in Berlin in 1883.