Julius Wolff (surgeon)

Julius Wolff (1836 to 1902) was a German surgeon, born in Maerkisch Friedland, who is remembered for Wolff's law, which describes the relationship between bone geometry and mechanical influences on bone. He took his doctorate in 1861 under Bernhard von Langenbeck at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, settled as a general practitioner in Berlin and served as a surgeon in three military campaigns, in 1864, 1866 and 1870 to 1871. He set out his law in the 1892 work The Law of Transformation of the Bone and saw it as an extension of Darwin's theory of evolution. He was the first professor of orthopedics at the Charite, founded and directed the first department of orthopaedic surgery in Berlin, and co-founded the German Society for Orthopedic Surgery in 1901. He died of a stroke in 1902.