Emil Du Bois-Reymond - Life

Life

Du Bois-Reymond was born in Berlin, and spent his working life there. One of his younger brothers was the mathematician Paul du Bois-Reymond (1831–1889). The family was of Huguenot origin.

Educated first at the French College in Berlin, then at Neuchâtel, where his father had returned, Du Bois-Reymond entered in 1836 the University of Berlin. He seems to have been uncertain at first as to the topic of his studies, for he was a student of the renowned ecclesiastical historian August Neander, and dallied with geology, but eventually he began to study medicine, with such zeal and success as to attract the notice of Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858), a well-known teacher of anatomy and physiology.

Müller's earlier studies had been distinctly physiological, but his inclination, no less than his position as professor of anatomy as well as of physiology in the University of Berlin, caused him later to study of comparative anatomy, and this, aided by his interest in problems of general philosophy, gave his views of physiology a breadth and a depth which influenced the progress of that science in his day profoundly. He had, about the time when the young Du Bois-Reymond came to his lectures, published his Elements of Physiology, the dominant note of which may be said to be this:

"Though there appears to be something in the phenomena of living beings which cannot be explained by ordinary mechanical, physical or chemical laws, much may be so explained, and we may without fear push these explanations as far as we can, so long as we keep to the solid ground of observation and experiment."

Müller recognized in the Neuchâtel a mind fitted to carry on physical researches into the phenomena of living things in a legitimate way. He made Du Bois-Reymond in 1840 his assistant in physiology, and as a starting-point for an inquiry put into his hands the essay which the Italian Carlo Matteucci, had just published on the electric phenomena of animals. This determined the work of Du Bois-Reymond's life. He chose as the subject of his graduation thesis "Electric fishes," and so commenced a long series of investigations on bioelectricity, by which he enriched science and made for himself a name. The results of these inquiries were made known partly in papers communicated to scientific journals, but also and chiefly in his work Researches on Animal Electricity, the first part of which appeared in 1848, the last in 1884.