Famous Pathologists
Paul Langerhans (1847 - 1888)
He was a famous German pathologist and biologist.
Islets of Langerhans - Pancreatic cells which produce insulin. Langerhans discovered these cells during his studies for his doctorate at the Berlin Pathological Institute in 1869.
Langerhans cells - Skin cells concerned with the immune response and which sometimes contain Langerhans granules.
Carl Rokitansky 1804-1878
Carl Rokitansky, a Vienna pathologist. In his productive lifetime, Rokitansky performed about 20,000 autopsies; an additional 60,000 were performed under his general direction.Given that this level of activity continued for 50 years, he supervised about 2,000 postmortem examinations each year.
Rudolf Virchow 1821-1905
A hundred and fifty years passed between the invention of the microscope and its use in the examination of diseased tissues. Antonj van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) is credited with development of the first usable compound microscope. While he discovered life in a drop of water and microbes in the mouth, it wasn't until Rudolf Virchow (1821-1905) came along that the microscope aided the study of disease.
Virchow, apparently, was the first to recognize that diseases arise from alterations within tissues and cells. He identified and classified a number of such conditions; many still carry the designations he coined. At the gross level he is credited with developing commonly used terms like "thrombosis" and "embolism." Virchow compiled his observations and his classifications in the important book Cellular Pathology (Cellularpathologie) published in 1858. There is no question about Virchow's place in the pantheon of pathology. His contributions lead to the identification of disease at the microscopic level and led to the development of biopsy and cytology procedures. While recent advances at the subcellular level will, no doubt, change the methods of disease recognition in the 21st century, identification and treatment of most diseases now continue to rely upon developments that flowed from Virchow's work.
Julius Cohnheim 1839-1884
Most of the early efforts in anatomy and pathology focused upon the structure of normal and abnormal tissues. In the middle of the 19th century some scholars began to incorporate what was known about function (physiology) into their considerations of structure. One of these was Julius Cohnheim, a student of Virchow.
While well versed in structure, Cohnheim became interested in dynamic rather than static pathology. He devised experiments to study inflammation as it was happening rather than after the tissue was dead. These experiments led him to be called the "father of experimental pathology." Cohnheim was always in the quest for functional explanations of diseases an endeavor now known as "pathologic physiology.
Georgios N. Papanikolaou
(or George Papanicolaou; Greek: Γεώργιος Παπανικολάου) (May 13, 1883–February 19, 1962) was born at Kimi on the island of Evia, in Greece. He was a pioneer in cytology and early cancer detection.
He studied at the University of Athens where he received his medical degree in 1904. Six years later he received his Ph.D. from the University of Munich, Germany. In 1913 he emigrated to the U.S. in order to work in the department of Pathology of New York Hospital and the Department of Anatomy at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He first reported that uterine cancer could be diagnosed by means of a vaginal smear in 1928, but the importance of his work was not recognized until the publication, together with Herbert Traut, of 'Diagnosis of Uterine Cancer by the Vaginal Smear' in 1943. The book discusses the preparation of the vaginal and cervical smear, physiologic cytologic changes during the menstrual cycle, effect of various pathological conditions, and the changes seen in the presence of cancer of the cervix and the endometrium of the uterus. He thus became known for his invention of Papanicolaou's test, now known as the Pap smear or Pap test, which is used worldwide for the detection and prevention of cervical cancer and other cytologic diseases of the female reproductive system.
In 1961 he moved to Miami to develop the Papanicolaou Cancer Research Institute at the University of Miami, but died in 1962 prior to its opening.
Dr. Papanicolaou was a recipient of the Lasker Award.
Gustav Giemsa (November 20, 1867 - June 10, 1948) was a German chemist and bacteriologist who was a native of Medar-Blechhammer. He is remembered for creating a dye solution commonly known as "Giemsa stain". This dye is used for the histopathological diagnosis of malaria and parasites such as Plasmodium, Trypanosoma, and Chlamydia.
Giemsa studied pharmacy and mineralogy at the University of Leipzig, and chemistrry and bacteriology at the University of Berlin. Between 1895 and 1898 he worked as a pharmacist in German East Africa. He was an early assistant to Bernhard Nocht at the Institut für Tropenmedizin in Hamburg, where in 1900 he became head of the Department of Chemistry.
In 1904 Giemsa published an essay on the staining procedure for flagellates, blood cells, and bacteria. Giemsa improved the Romanowsky stain (Eosin Y and Methylene Blue) by stabilizing this dye solution with glycerol. This allowed for reproducible staining of cells for microscopy purposes. This method is still used in laboratories today.
Norman Barrett
Norman Rupert Barrett (1903-1979) was an Australian-born British thoracic surgeon who is primarily remembered for describing Barrett’s oesophagus.
In 1946, he wrote a paper for the first issue of Thorax on spontaneous rupture of the oesophagus (Boerhaave syndrome). In 1950, he published a paper in which he described the oesophagus as "that part of the foregut, distal to the cricopharyngeal sphincter, which is lined by squamous epithelium". In this paper, Barrett suggested that the finding of an oesophagus lined with columnar epithelium (rather than the usual squamous epithelium) was due to the presence of a congenitally shortened oesophagus leading to a tubular portion of stomach being trapped in the chest. In this article Barrett also introduced the term reflux oesophagitis, and described the development of benign oesophageal strictures in patients with this condition.
Allison and Johnstone argued that this columnar epithelium–lined structure was oesophagus and not stomach, and suggested that ulcers in this structure be called "Barrett's ulcers". Seven years after his initial article Barrett accepted this view, suggesting that it be called the "lower oesophagus lined by columnar epithelium". The columnar epithelium surrounding the chronic Barrett's ulcers has subsequently become known as Barrett's oesophagus.
He died in London on 8th January 1979.
Lauren V. Ackerman, M.D. (12 March 1905 - 27 July 1993)
L.V.Ackerman was a prestigious American pathologist, who championed the subspecialty of surgical pathology in the mid-twentieth century.
In 1940, a job in pathology was offered to Ackerman at the Ellis Fischel Cancer Hospital (EFCH) in Columbia, MO, a state-run center for indigent patients with malignancies. In 1948, Ackerman was offered a position at Barnes Hospital as the chief surgical pathologist and associate professor of Surgery, under the chairmanship of Dr. Evarts Ambrose Graham (it was then a common practice for surgical pathologists to be part of surgery faculties).
Dr. Ackerman accrued an ever-greater experience in diagnostic surgical pathology over the succeeding several years. In the early 1950s, he decided to apply that knowledge to the formulation of a textbook, which was essentially single-authored and published in 1953 with the simple title "Surgical Pathology". Although other texts on the topic did exist -- notably one by Dr. William Boyd -- Ackerman's monograph was singular in that it focused on differential diagnosis and the clinical significance of morphologic findings. Accordingly, it rapidly drew attention and acclaim from other practicing pathologists.
In mid-1993, Ackerman developed abdominal complaints and was found to have
peritoneal carcinomatosis from a colonic cancer. He died on July 27 of that year.
Juan Rosai, M.D. (born August 20, 1940)
Dr. Rosai is an Italian-American physician who has made important contributions to medicine and surgical pathology.
Dr. Rosai is the author of more than 400 scientific peer-reviewed papers in pathology. These have concerned the discovery and seminal descriptions of such clinicopathologic entities as Rosai-Dorfman disease (sinus histiocytosis with massive lymphadenopathy) and the desmoplastic small round cell tumor. He has been the editor and principal author of the textbook that is now called “Rosai and Ackerman’s Surgical Pathology” from its 5th to 9th (current) editions. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the 3rd Series of the Atlas of Tumor Pathology of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), and author of its fascicles on Tumors of the Thymus and Tumors of the Thyroid Gland Rosai also edited a book on the history of the American surgical pathology called “Guiding the Surgeon’s Hand”. He is well-known for his exceptional diagnostic ability in surgical pathology and for his mentorship of generations of American pathologists. Indeed, Rosai has been called "the pathologist of pathologists".
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