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Theodor Karl Gustav von Leber

Born  1840
Died  1917

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German ophthalmologist, born February 29, 1840, Karlsruhe; died April 17, 1917, Heidelberg.

Biography of Theodor Karl Gustav von Leber

Theodor Karl Gustav von Leber was the son of a professor of languages in Karlsruhe. Initially he was attracted to the study of chemistry, but the great professor Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (1811-1899) advised him to study medicine, as there were far too many chemists. He was a pupil of Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894) in Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in 1862 and spent a year as an assistant to Herman Jakob Knapp (1832-1911) at the Heidelberg eye clinic.

Leber subsequently went to Vienna to study physiology under Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (1816-1895), but soon turned to ophthalmology, becoming an assistant to Albrecht Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst von Graefe (1828-1870) in Berlin for the period 1867-1870. He also stayed for some time in Paris.

Leber was habilitated for ophthalmology in Berlin in 1869. He became professor extraordinary of opthalmology and director of the university eye clinic in Göttingen in 1871, and in 1890 he was called to the chair and the directorship of the Eye Clinic at Heidelberg, where he remained until his retirement in 1910.

From 1871 Leber was co-publisher and geschäftsführender editor of Albrecht von Grafe's Archiv für Ophthalmologie.

A scholarship given by the German Ophthalmological Society is named for him: Theodor-Leber-Stipendium zur Förderung der pharmakologischen und pharmakophysiologischen Forschung in der Augenheilkunde.

We thank Günter Krämer and Patrick Jucker-Kupper, both Switzerland, for information submitted.

Bibliography

  • Anatomische Untersuchungen über die Blutgefässe des menschlichen Auges.
    Denkschrift der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 1865.
  • Untersuchungen über die Caries der Zähne.
    With Jean Baptist Rottenstein. Berlin : Verlag von August Hirschwald, 1867.
  • Der Augenspiegel. Berlin, 1872.
  • Studien über den Flüssigkeitswechsel im Auge.
    [Albrecht von Graefes] Archiv für Ophthalmologie, 1973, 19, Abt. II, 87-185.
  • Ueber die Erkrankungen des Auges bei Diabetes mellitus.
    [Albrecht von Graefes] Archiv für Ophthalmologie, 1875, 21, Abteilung III, 206.337.
  • Die Circulations- und Ernährungsverhältnisse des Auges.
    In Graefe-Saemisch: Handbuch der gesamten Augenheilkunde, 1876.
    Also in 2nd edition, volume 2, 2. Leipzig, 1903, page 1076. 9: 1916
  • Die Krankheiten der Netzhaut und des Sehnerven.
    In Graefe-Saemisch: Handbuch der gesamten Augenheilkunde, volume 3 and 4; Leipzig, 1877; 2nd edition, 1915-1916.
  • Die Entstehung der Entzündung und die Wirkung der entzündungserregenden Schädlichkeiten.
    In Graefe-Saemisch: Handbuch der gesamten Augenheilkunde, volume, 4. Leipzig, 1891. List of written works in Julius Hirschberg: Geschichte der Augenheilkunde, volume 15, 2, page 53; Leipzig.

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