Rudolf Virchow

Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor and politician, born on 13 October 1821 and known as the father of modern pathology and the founder of social medicine. He studied medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, and his investigation of the 1847 to 1848 typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia laid a foundation for public health in Germany. After the Revolution of 1848 he was expelled from the Charite hospital, took the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Wurzburg in 1849 and returned to Berlin in 1856 to a new Institute for Pathology. His Cellular Pathology of 1858 is regarded as the root of modern pathology. He co-founded the Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, sat in the Prussian House of Representatives and the Reichstag, and was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1892.