Bernhard von Langenbeck

Bernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck (1810 to 1887) was a German surgeon, born at Padingbüttel and trained at Göttingen, where one of his teachers was his uncle Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck. He became professor of surgery at Kiel in 1842 and in 1848 took over the Clinical Institute for Surgery and Ophthalmology at the Charité in Berlin, where he stayed until ill health forced his retirement in 1882. He is known for Langenbeck's amputation and for founding Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery. He specialised in military surgery and the treatment of gunshot wounds, serving as a field surgeon in the Schleswig wars, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, and he is sometimes called the father of the surgical residency because he had young graduates live at the hospital and take on growing responsibility for surgical patients.