Gustav Fritsch

Gustav Theodor Fritsch (1838 to 1927) was a German anatomist, anthropologist, traveller and physiologist from Cottbus. He studied natural science and medicine in Berlin, Breslau and Heidelberg, and in 1874 became an associate professor of physiology at the University of Berlin, where he later headed the histological department of the physiological institute. He is best known for his work with the neuropsychiatrist Eduard Hitzig on the localization of the motor areas of the brain: in 1870 the two men stimulated the cerebral cortex of a dog electrically and found that different areas caused involuntary contractions of specific parts of the body. Alongside his medical work Fritsch carried out ethnographic research in southern Africa between 1863 and 1866, joined a solar eclipse expedition to Aden in 1868 and a transit of Venus expedition to Isfahan in 1874, and studied electric fish in the eastern Mediterranean in 1881 and 1882.