Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath

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Gerhard Rudolph Edmund Meyer-Schwickerath (born July 10, 1920 in Elberfeld , † January 20, 1992 in Essen ) was a German ophthalmologist and university professor and researcher. From 1959 until his retirement he was director of the University Eye Clinic in Essen.

Life

Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath was born as the son of Edmund Meyer (1887–1973) and Josephine Meyer geb. Schmitz (1890-1959). In 1935 the family also took the maiden name of Edmund Meyer's mother (Julie Schwickerath, 1860–1929) and from then on called themselves Meyer-Schwickerath. One year after Gerhard the brother Klaus Meyer-Schwickerath was born, who studied law and became a politician.

Career

After graduating from high school, Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath decided, contrary to family tradition, not to become a lawyer , but a doctor , because he did not want to ensure justice under National Socialism . He began studying medicine in 1940. During the Second World War he also worked as a paramedic , a knee injury saved him from being deployed to the front. Shortly after the war he received his doctorate in Hamburg , carried out the first experiments on light coagulation at the Hamburg University Hospital under Oswald Marchesani in 1949 and received his habilitation in 1953 with a paper on this subject . Since 1959 chief medical officer at the municipal hospitals in Essen , he managed their conversion to the medical university clinic together with Paul Mikat and Kurt Biedenkopf, among others .

From 1959 until his retirement in 1985, Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath was Director of the Eye Clinic (Center for Ophthalmology) at the University Hospital Essen . He was also an honorary member, long-term member of the executive committee and 1973/75 president of the DOG ( German Ophthalmological Society ), the scientific association of ophthalmologists. Leonard Bernstein was one of his most famous patients .

Meyer-Schwickerath gained an international reputation with the development of light coagulation and his other work. Charles P. Wilkinson, President of the American Academy of Ophthalmology , named him one of the legendary names in ophthalmology in a speech at the DOG Congress in 2007: “I can assure you that the names Graefe , Helmholtz , Leber , right up to Custodis , Meyer-Schwickerath - that these legendary names are known to almost every assistant doctor who has ever completed his medical degree in America. "

Justification of light coagulation

In 1946/1947 Meyer-Schwickerath discovered "that a progressive detachment of the retina comes to a standstill on a scar on the retina." The idea of ​​creating scarring by means of light is said to have occurred to him during a sleepless night in which he feared it to forget that I wrote down the two words "light" and "coagulation" on a piece of paper. In 1949 he carried out the first successful treatment of a retinal detachment with a light beam (light coagulation) by using a self-made device on the roof of the eye clinic at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf to focus sunlight and guide it through mirrors into the operating room and into the eye of a patient.

Depending on the sunlight and the shout of an employee posted on the roof about the position of the sun and the development of clouds, this method proved to be inadequate in the long run. Therefore, in cooperation with the Carl Zeiss works, he developed a light coagulator that works with a xenon high-pressure lamp, which made it independent of the sun and which also generated a stronger light beam. "His method of photo or light coagulation has meanwhile been replaced by the use of lasers, but nothing has changed in the principle of the treatment of preliminary stages of retinal detachment, tumors and vascular diseases as well as diabetic eye changes."

As a loan from the Optical Museum of the Carl Zeiss company in Oberkochen , the German Museum Bonn is exhibiting original parts of the sunlight coagulator developed by Meyer-Schwickerath from 1949 under the inventory number 1994 - 11,000.

Honors

Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates from various universities. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times , but did not receive it. As his greatest distinction, he himself considered admission to the order Pour le Mérite for science and the arts. Other awards:

The Oculo-dento-digital dysplasia is also called "Meyer-Schwickerath syndrome".

literature

  • Peter Voswinckel:  Meyer-Schwickerath, Gerhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 384 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Sibylle Scholtz: Dr. Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath - his story of the "captured" sun . In: Deutsche Optikerzeitung . No. 2/2006. DOZ-Verlag, Heidelberg, p. 28 f.
  • Achim Wessing : Prof. Dr. Dr. hc mult. Gerd Meyer-Schwickerath and his work. Director of the Essen Eye Clinic from 1959 to 1985. In: KW Schmid, R. Kampschulte, G. Brittinger, FW Eigler (eds.): Tradition and Innovation. 100 years: From the municipal hospitals to the Essen University Hospital. van Acken, Krefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-923140-00-8 , pp. 219-249.
  • Klaus Meyer-Schwickerath: pioneer of light. Prof. Klaus Hemmerle , Bishop of Aachen 1975–1994 and Prof. Gerd Meyer-Schwickerath, Director of the Essen Eye Clinic 1959–1985 . Mainz, Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8107-0094-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Wolfgang Hippe, State Prize NRW: Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath, State Prize Winner of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia 1989. online
  2. ^ DOG, page Presidium DOG, page Presidents
  3. ↑ "I can assure you that the names von Graefe, Helmholtz, Leber, all the way up to Custodis, Meyer-Schwickerath - these legendary names are known to virtually every resident who has ever trained in America." Charles P. Wilkinson, address at the 105th DOG Congress in Berlin, DOG: Ceremony with greetings 2007 (PDF; 515 kB) p. 4
  4. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage et al .: Encyclopedia of Medical History . Volume 1: A-G. de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1074 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  5. ↑ a b Meyer-Schwickerath-Lecture: Medical Faculty honors great researchers and teachers, June 22, 2001 - (idw) University of Essen (until December 31, 2002). uni-protocol.de
  6. ^ Deutsches Museum Bonn, original parts of the sunlight coagulator developed by Schwickerath
  7. ↑ Homepage In memory of Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath , page Gerd MS ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.meyer-schwickerath.net
  8. ↑ a b DOG, page prices
  9. ^ Member entry by Gerd Meyer-Schwickerath at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on April 3, 2016.
  10. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. (PDF) State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer-Schwickerath, Gerhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer-Schwickerath, Gerhard Rudolph Edmund (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ophthalmologist, founder of light coagulation on the eye
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1992
Place of death eat