Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath

Gerhard Rudolph Edmund Meyer-Schwickerath (10 July 1920 – 20 January 1992) was a German ophthalmologist, university lecturer and researcher. He is known as the father of light coagulation which was the predecessor to many eye surgeries.

Early life Gerhard Rudolph Meyer was born as the son of Edmund Meyer (1887–1973) and Josephine Meyer B. Schmitz (1890–1959) in Elberfeld, Germany. In 1935, the family also adopted surname of Edmund Meyer's mother, Julie Schwickerath (1860–1929) and henceforth Gerhard Rudolph Meyer was stylized as Meyer-Schwickerath. One year after Gerhard's birth, his younger brother, Klaus Meyer-Schwickerath, was born, who went on to study law and become a politician.

Career Shortly after the war, Meyer-Schwickerath moved to Hamburg, where he worked as an assistant physician at the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf's eye clinic until 1952. In 1953, he received his post-doctoral degree and the right to professorship at the University of Bonn. In 1959, he worked as senior physician with Paul Mikat and Kurt Biedenkopf to transform Essen's municipal hospital into the Essen University Hospital. One of his most famous patients was Leonard Bernstein. "His method of photo- or light coagulation has now been replaced by the application of the laser, but nothing has changed in the principle of the treatment of pre-stages of retinal detachment, of tumors and vascular diseases, and of diabetic eye changes."

The Deutschmuseum Bonn is the loan of the optical museum of the company Carl Zeiss in Oberkochen, the original part of the sunlight coagulator developed by Meyer-Schwickerath from 1949 under the inventory number 1994 – L11.000.

Personal life In 1945, after the war and graduation, Meyer-Schwickerath married 22-year-old Berta Steinbicker in Münster. They had three sons and one daughter.

Legacy

With the development of the light coagulation technique and his later work, Meyer-Schwickerath acquired an international reputation. At the 2007 DOG congress, Charles P. Wilkinson, president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, counted Meyer-Schwickerath among the pantheon of German medical figures. Wilkinson said, "I can assure you that the names von Graefe, Helmholtz, Leber, all the way up to Custodis, Meyer-Schwickerath – these legendary names are known to virtually every resident who has ever trained in America."

Honors

Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath received numerous awards and honorary doctorate different universities. His name was proposed for the Nobel Prize three times, but he did not receive it. He regarded his greatest prize of the Order Pour le Mérite for science and the arts. Other awards:

1960: Graefe Prize of the German Ophthalmological Society 1969: Election in the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina 1978: Pour le Mérite 1981: Large Federal Service Cross with Stern 1986: Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia 1986: Graefe Medal of the German Ophthalmological Society 1989: State Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia