Karl Stargardt

Karl Bruno Stargardt (1875 to 1927) was a German ophthalmologist born in Berlin. He took his doctorate at Kiel University in 1899 and later became chief physician at its university eye clinic. He then worked in the eye clinic at Strassburg, led ophthalmology at Bonn, and in 1923 succeeded Alfred Bielschowsky as chair of ophthalmology at the University of Marburg. In 1909 he described seven patients with a recessively inherited macular dystrophy, a progressive and severe loss of central vision beginning in the first and second decades of life, and the condition is now known as Stargardt disease. He also wrote a 1912 work on the diagnosis of colour vision disorders. He died in 1927 after developing nephritis and cardiac complications.