Anton Wilhelm Plaz

Anton Wilhelm Plaz was a German physician and botanist from Leipzig, born there on 1 January 1708 and dying in the same city on 26 February 1784. He began his medical studies at the universities of Leipzig and Halle in 1723 and received his doctorate at Halle in 1728. In 1733 he became an associate professor of botany at Leipzig, and over the following decades he moved through a series of chairs in the medical faculty: full professor of botany from 1749, then physiology, anatomy and surgery, pathology, and finally therapy, which he held until his death. From 1773 to 1784 he also served as dean of the medical faculty, and he was a member of the Imperial Academy of Naturalists. His career shows how an eighteenth century German university professor could teach across a wide spread of the medical curriculum.