Carl Flügge

Carl Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Flügge (12 September 1847 – 10 December 1923) 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 at the University of Göttingen, the University of Bonn, Leipzig University, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1878, he taught hygiene at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin. In 1881, Flügge became the first chair of hygiene at the University of Göttingen, and afterwards was a professor at the University of Breslau and the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, where he succeeded Max Rubner (1854–1932) at the Department of Hygiene.

Flügge was a colleague of microbiologist Robert Koch (1843–1910), with whom he co-edited the journal Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten. Two of his better-known assistants at Breslau were Wolfgang Weichardt (1875–1943) and Walther Kruse (1864–1943).

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 (1850–1905) 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:

Part 1; Part 2. Articles include: Die Verbreitung der Phthise durch staubförmiges Sputum und durch beim Husten verspritzte Tröpfchen. Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten volume 30, pages 107–124 (1899)