Rudolf Schirmer

Rudolf Schirmer (1831 to 1896) was a German ophthalmologist from Greifswald. He began his medical studies at the University of Greifswald and continued them at Göttingen, Berlin, Paris and Vienna before returning to Greifswald, where he qualified as a university lecturer in ophthalmology in 1860. In 1873 he took the chair of ophthalmology and held it until he retired in 1893, and in 1885 he succeeded the philosopher Wilhelm Schuppe as rector of the university. He is remembered for establishing ophthalmology as an independent discipline at Greifswald and for research on anomalies of refraction and accommodation of the eye, and he also made extensive studies of diseases of the lacrimal apparatus. The term Schirmer's syndrome has been used for the association of hydrophthalmia, an early form of glaucoma, with Sturge-Weber syndrome. His son Otto Schirmer (1864 to 1918) also became a professor of ophthalmology at Greifswald.