Jan Evangelista Purkyně
Czech anatomist and physiologist who discovered key cellular and sensory phenomena.
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Jan Evangelista Purkyně was a Czech anatomist and physiologist born in Libochovice in 1787.[1][2] He is best known for discovering Purkinje cells in the cerebellum and Purkinje fibres in the heart.[3] His fame was such that letters addressed only "Purkyně, Europe" reached him.[1]
Key facts and history
Purkyně was born on 17 December 1787 in Libochovice, Bohemia, to Rosalie Safranek and Josef Purkinje.[4] After senior high school in 1804, he joined the Piarists order as a monk but left to pursue science freely.[2] He earned his medical doctorate in 1819 and worked as an assistant in anatomy and physiology at Charles University.[4] In 1823 he became professor of physiology at the University of Breslau.[4]
He married Julia Agnes Rudolphi, daughter of his supporter Karl Rudolphi, in 1827.[5] In 1850 he accepted the Physiology chair at Prague Medical Faculty, holding it until his death.[2]
What the research sources say
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia states that Purkyně introduced techniques for decalcification of bones and teeth and for embedding tissue specimens.[4] He studied subjective sensory phenomena by experimenting on his own senses in his home laboratory between 1818 and 1825.[4] He observed that when light intensity decreases, different colored objects of equal brightness appear unequally bright, later called the Purkyně shift.[4] He induced vertigo by experimenting on himself in a specially designed chair and described the relationship between head position and perceived motion direction, later called Purkyně's law of vertigo.[4]
He identified the germinal vesicle in chicken eggs and proposed that the ovum develops around it.[4] His findings of cellular structures he called granules in animal and plant tissues contributed to the development of cell theory.[4]
References
- Wikipedia, "Jan Evangelista Purkyně" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bhattacharyya, KB. Eminent Neuroscientists: Their Lives and Works. Bimal Kuman Dhur of Academic Publishers, 2011, p. 182. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jan Evangelista Purkyně" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Cavero, "Reminiscing about Jan Evangelista Purkinje: a pioneer of modern experimental physiology", Advances in Physiology Education, 1 December 2017, p. 528–538 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jan Evangelista Purkyně" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ball, "Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life", Distillations, 2016, p. 15–23 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Jan Evangelista Purkyne (1787-1869) Embryo Project Encyclopedia", embryo.asu.edu. facts only, no text reused. embryo.asu.edu
- Wikipedia, "Jan Evangelista Purkyně" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mazurak, "Jan Evangelista Purkinje: A Passion for Discovery", Texas Heart Institute Journal, February 2018, p. 23–26 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Jan Evangelista Purkyně (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Jan Evangelista Purkyně (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the Codexery glossary, each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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