Emil du Bois-Reymond

Emil du Bois-Reymond was a German physiologist who helped establish electrophysiology through experiments on the electrical properties of nerves and muscles.

Resting potential: The voltage difference across a cell membrane when the cell is not undergoing an action potential. His nerve preparations revealed electrical differences between resting tissue and injured tissue.
Johannes Müller: A German physiologist whose work on sensory physiology and nerves shaped nineteenth-century experimental biology. Du Bois-Reymond trained under Müller and extended his research on nerve physiology.
Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke: An Austrian physiologist who helped establish a mechanistic, experimentally grounded approach to biology. Brücke belonged to the same scientific circle committed to explaining organisms through physical processes.
Action potential: A rapid, transient change in a cell’s membrane voltage that propagates along excitable cells. Later electrophysiology refined the electrical events that his experiments first made experimentally accessible.
Rheoscopic frog leg: A frog-leg preparation that twitches when exposed to electrical currents from another active muscle or nerve. Such preparations made the electrical activity of living tissue visible through a muscular response.
Injury potential: A voltage difference produced when damaged and undamaged regions of excitable tissue are electrically connected. The negative variation he measured arose when a previously resting nerve or muscle was stimulated or injured.
Berlin University: A research university founded in Berlin in 1810, later known as Humboldt University of Berlin. Du Bois-Reymond studied and taught there, conducting much of his influential research in Berlin.
Carl Ludwig: A German physiologist known for developing instruments and experimental methods for studying bodily functions. Ludwig shared du Bois-Reymond’s generation of German experimental physiologists.
Cell theory: The biological principle that organisms consist of cells, the basic units of structure and function. His work helped place electrical phenomena within a broader program of explaining life through physical processes.
Animal electricity: The historical idea that living organisms generate electrical phenomena distinct from ordinary physical electricity. His research tested and systematized the electrical phenomena associated with living tissue.

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