Hermann Wilbrand
Hermann Wilbrand was a German ophthalmologist born in Giessen.
Wilbrand was born in Giessen, Germany to Albertine Knapp and Franz Joseph Julius Wilbrand, a forensic physician. His older brother Julius Wilbrand was a chemist who discovered TNT and his grandfather was physician.
In 1875, he earned his doctorate at the University of Strassburg, and afterwards was an assistant to Ludwig Laqueur at Strassburg and to Carl Friedrich Richard Förster at Breslau. Later he moved to Hamburg, where he became head of the department of ophthalmology at Allgemeines Hospital in 1905.
Wilbrand specialized in the field of neuro-ophthalmology and carried out extensive research involving the pathology and physiology of the eye. He demonstrated that homonymous hemianopsia was caused by lesions in the occipital lobe and optic radiation as well as the optic tract.
Associated eponyms
- Wilbrand's knee: A group of extramacular ganglion cell axons that extend forward into the posterior optic nerve.
- Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome: Syndrome involving visual agnosia and the inability to re-visualize images. Condition due to occlusion of the posterior cerebral artery of the dominant hemisphere. Named with French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.