Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (1821 to 1902)

THE FIRST chair in pathological anatomy in Germany, the fourth in the whole world, was created in 1845 in Wurzberg and conferred upon Adam Bernhard Mohr. A few years later, after the death of Mohr, a man of 28 years got a call to this chair, a young scientist who had attracted the attention of the faculty by his "excellent achievements in the field of histology." His name was Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (Fig 1), and when he came on Nov 1, 1849, from Berlin to Wurzburg it was not yet suggested that the man who began his work in the garden pavilion of the Juliusspital (Fig 2) was destined to become the world's greatest pathologist. Let us have a look at the course of Virchow's life before coming to Wurzburg. Rudofl Ludwig Carl Virchow was born on Oct 13, 1821, in Schivelbein, Pomerania, one of Germany's eastern regions. His