Georg Ledderhose

Georg Otto Ledderhose (1855 to 1925) was a German surgeon, professor and pioneering traumatologist, born in the Bockenheim district of Frankfurt am Main. He studied medicine at Strasbourg and Goettingen, where in 1876 he treated lobster shells with hydrochloric acid and obtained the crystals he named glycosamine, now known as glucosamine. After taking his degree at Strasbourg in 1880 he practised surgery at the Hopital Civil and became a professor of surgery there in 1891. He was commissioned to build and run two accident hospitals in the city, a convalescent home in 1892 and the Unfallkrankenhaus in 1901, and directed the latter until he was expelled from Alsace in 1918. He then taught in Munich. In 1894 he gave the first description of plantar fibromatosis, which carries his name as Ledderhose's disease.