Ernst Wilhelm Ritter von Brücke (6 July 1819 – 7 January 1892) was a German physician and physiologist. He is credited with contributions made in many facets of physiology.
Biography
He was born Ernst Wilhelm Brücke in Berlin. He graduated in medicine at the University of Berlin in 1842, and during the following year, he became a research assistant to Johannes Peter Müller. In 1845 he founded the Physikalische Gesellschaft (Physical Society) in Berlin, together with Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Hermann von Helmholtz and others, in the house of physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus. Later on, this became known as the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Society of Physics). In 1846, Brücke was elected teacher of anatomy in the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, in Berlin. Following that, in 1848 he was appointed as professor of physiology at the University of Königsberg, replacing Karl Friedrich Burdach (1776–1847). In 1849 he acquired similar duties at the University of Vienna. In 1873, Emperor Franz Joseph I honored Brücke with a noble title—von Brücke—but he rarely used it.
Ernst Fleischl von Marxow (1846–1891), and Joseph Paneth (1857–1890), two colleagues of Freud, were assistants to Brücke in Vienna; however Brücke is most noted for his influence on Sigmund Freud, one of his other medical students. Freud began studying under Brücke in 1877, and continued doing so until 1883. He was tasked to examine the biology of nervous tissue, specifically comparing the brains of humans and other vertebrates to that of invertebrates. Freud would many times call Brücke the professor who shaped him the most. This influence led to the development of the science of psychodynamics. Brücke's teachings did not only influence Freud's work; parts of the noted psychologist's theory were pulled directly from his professor's principles, specifically the idea that all living things are dynamic and must bow to the laws of chemistry and physics.
Brücke retired from the University of Vienna in September 1890 and began working on a book he had long planned to write: Beauty and the Flaws of the Human Stature, which ended up being published as The Human Figure: Its Beauties and Defects.
Research
Brücke is remembered for his research on the nature of cells, work dealing with the physiology of language, investigations on the effect of electricity on muscles and studies of albumin. He also made significant contributions in the fields of physics, plant physiology, microscopic anatomy and experimental physiology.
During Brücke's lifetime, specialization was not popularized. Because of this, he had very diverse interests, and made assorted contributions to the scientific community. Early on in his career, Brücke was interested in optics, which led him to research the tapetum lucidum of the vertebrate eye and the action of the ciliary muscle. Following that, Brücke studied the eye's absorption of various light rays, the mystery of color sensation, and positive and negative afterimages. His work in the science of optics was instrumental towards Helmholtz's invention of the ophthalmoscope.
Further investigation of this related subject found Brücke examining the color changes in chameleons and cephalopods, then studying pigment cells, and observing how muscular contraction is influenced by the duration of a stimulus.
Brücke also made contributions in a completely different discipline, phonetics, when he wrote one of his early works directed at teachers of the deaf: Grundzüge der Physiologie und Systematik der Sprachlaute für Linguisten und Taubstummenlehre.
In addition to optics, cellular investigations, and phonetics, Brücke had a deep interest in philosophy and aesthetics, which was demonstrated by his authorship of semi-popular books, specifically a work on the physiology of color in applied art. Brücke's interest in color and the arts spread out from the scientific aspects of color into the industrial world as he laid down the principles of color combinations for the guidance of workers in fabrics. From this he took the short step from color to artistic form and to the declaration of the underlying principles of what makes art beautiful.
Ideology
Principles
Brücke was a positivist. During his time, it was not an organized school of thought, but more a general attitude toward man, nature, and methods of investigation. He and others who shared his beliefs wanted to bring the approach of the natural sciences in to the investigation of all human thought and action. Brücke delved deeply into his position on positivism in Lectures on Physiology, a course that was published in 1876.