Carl Flügge

Carl Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Flügge was a German bacteriologist and hygienist. His finding that pathogens were present in expiratory droplets, the eponymous Flügge droplets, laid the foundations for the concept of droplet transmission as a route for the spread of respiratory infectious diseases.

Biography

Originally from Hanover, Carl Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Flügge studied medicine in Göttingen, Bonn, Leipzig and Munich. In 1878 he taught hygiene in Berlin. In 1881 Flügge became the first chair of hygiene at the University of Göttingen, and afterwards was a professor at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin, where he succeeded Max Rubner at the Department of Hygiene.
Flügge was a colleague of microbiologist Robert Koch, with whom he co-edited the journal Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten. Two of his better-known assistants at Breslau were Wolfgang Weichardt and Walther Kruse.

Research

Flügge is known for advocating hygiene as an independent medical discipline, and is remembered for performing extensive research involving the transmission of infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and cholera. In the 1890s, he demonstrated that even during "quiet speech", minute droplets – the Flügge droplets – are propelled into the air. The finding was instrumental in Jan Mikulicz-Radecki advocating the use of surgical gauze masks in 1897, and was the foundation for the modern concept of droplet transmission.

Publications

Among his publications are two important books on hygiene:
Other works include:

Articles include:

. Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten volume 30, pages 107–124