Nikolaus Friedreich

Nikolaus Friedreich (1825 to 1882) was a German pathologist and neurologist, the third generation of a family of physicians. His father Johann Baptist Friedreich was a psychiatrist, and his grandfather Nicolaus Anton Friedreich was a pathologist remembered for an early description of idiopathic facial paralysis, later known as Bell palsy. He studied and practiced at the University of Würzburg under Albert von Kölliker and Rudolf Virchow, became professor of pathological anatomy there, and in 1858 took the chair of pathology and therapy at Heidelberg, where he stayed for the rest of his career. His students and assistants included Adolf Kussmaul, Wilhelm Erb and Friedrich Schultze. He worked on muscular dystrophy, spinal ataxia and brain tumors, published an early description of acute leukaemia in 1857, and is remembered for Friedreich ataxia, a degenerative disease of the spinal cord that he identified in 1863 and that affects speech, balance and coordination.