Enrico Sertoli

Enrico Sertoli (1842 to 1910) was an Italian physiologist, histologist and physician, born into a noble family in Sondrio in the Alps of northern Lombardy. He studied medicine at the University of Pavia, where he trained under the physiologist and histologist Eusebio Oehl and worked alongside future figures such as Giulio Bizzozzero and Camillo Golgi. In 1865, the year he graduated, he published a paper describing branched cells lining the seminiferous tubules of the human testis, which he saw using the microscope and special staining methods. He described their form without understanding their function; later work showed that they support and nourish developing germ cells, and they came to bear his name as Sertoli cells. He also did research in Vienna, worked in the physiology laboratory at Tübingen, served briefly in the army during a cholera epidemic in Sicily, and in 1870 became professor of physiology at the veterinary school in Milan, where he taught for decades before retiring to Sondrio in 1907.