Ludwig Georg Courvoisier

Ludwig Georg Courvoisier, known as Louis (1843-1918), was a surgeon and entomologist from Basel. Early naturalist interests, sparked by a childhood stay on Malta, led him to study medicine at Basel, where he won an academic prize for work on the fine structure of nerves and took his doctorate in 1868. After surgical training under August Socin he took charge of the deaconess hospital at Riehen, a post he kept for forty-seven years. He qualified as a lecturer in surgery in 1880, became an associate professor in 1888 and a full professor in 1900, having declined the Basel chair a year earlier. From 1884, following Langenbuch in Berlin, he contributed greatly to the growth of gallbladder surgery and performed several first operations; his 1890 monograph gathered his own and others experience and clearly defined gallstone disease and the typical operations. Separately, as an entomologist he unified the systematics and naming of the Lycaenidae butterflies, and his collection of about sixteen thousand specimens went to the Natural History Museum in Basel.