Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen

Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen (1833 to 1910) was a German pathologist born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, the son of an elementary school teacher and sexton. He studied medicine at Bonn, Würzburg and Berlin, took his doctorate in Berlin in 1855 and then trained in pathological anatomy under Rudolf Virchow. After posts at Königsberg and Würzburg he held the chair of general pathology and pathological anatomy at Strasbourg from 1872 until 1906, serving as dean and as rector of the university, and he was one of the founders of the German Society for Pathology in 1884. He is remembered for characterizing the tumors of neurofibromatosis type I, for coining the term haemochromatosis in 1889 and linking it to iron accumulation in tissue, and for systematically describing osteitis fibrosa cystica, which still carries his name. He was also the father of the physiologist Heinrich von Recklinghausen.