Abstract
JOHANN NEPOMUK CZERMAK was born June 17, 1828, in Prague. His father, Johann Conrad Czermak, was a medical practitioner of high repute in that city, and his uncle, Joseph Julius Czermak, enjoyed a considerable reputation as Professor of Medicine and Physiology, first at Gratz and afterwards at Vienna. Educated at the high school of his native town, Johann Czermak entered upon the study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1845. In 1847 he moved to Breslau, where he had the great advantage of living with the distinguished physiologist Purkinje. From Breslau he passed on in 1849 to Wiirzburg, where in 1850 he received the degree of M.D., publishing on that occasion an inaugural dissertation on “The Microscopical Anatomy of the Teeth,” in which he called attention to the larger “interglobular” spaces so often found in the upper part of the dentine. After a visit to England he settled at Prague, where he became assistant to Purkinje, who then held the chair of Physiology in that place. In 1855 he left Prague to take the chair of Zoology at Gratz; but zoology was not his proper province, and he gladly accepted in 1856 the offer of the Professorship of Physiology at Krakau, which however he left in the following year for the like chair in Pesth. In both these universities he established physiological laboratories and gave a decided impulse to physiological research; but the political agitations then rife made life distasteful to him there, and in 1860 he resigned his chair and returned to Prague. Such frequent changes must have interfered greatly with sustained research, but by this time Czermak had made his name known as well by several investigations in experimental physiology and in subjective vision, as especially by his researches on the laryngoscope, his treatise on which (“Der Kehlkopfspiegel und seine Verwerthung”) embodying the results made known in various papers in 1858 and 1859, he published shortly before his return to Prague.
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FOSTER, M. Johann Nepomuk Czermak . Nature 9, 63–64 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/009063c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/009063c0