Friedrich Albert von Zenker

Friedrich Albert von Zenker (1825 to 1898) was a German pathologist and physician born in Dresden and educated at Leipzig and Heidelberg. In Leipzig he assisted Justus Radius at the St. Georg Hospital, and from 1851 he was attached to the city hospital of Dresden, adding in 1855 the post of professor of pathological anatomy and general pathology at the surgico-medical academy there. In 1862 he became professor of pathological anatomy and pharmacology at Erlangen, and three years later he joined Hugo Wilhelm von Ziemssen in editing the Deutsches Archiv fur klinische Medizin. He is celebrated for recognising, in 1860, the danger of trichinosis in people, which he published as a study of the trichina disease of man, and for this work the French Academy of Sciences gave him the Monthyon Prize in 1865. Zenker's diverticulum, a false diverticulum of the posterior pharyngeal wall, is named after him. He retired in 1895.