Carl Flügge

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Carl Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Flügge (September 12, 1847 - December 10, 1923) was a German bacteriologist and hygienist who was a native of Hannover. He studied medicine in Göttingen, Bonn, Leipzig and Munich, and in 1878 was a lecturer of hygiene in Berlin. In 1881 he became the first chair of hygiene at the University of Göttingen, and afterwards a professor at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin, where he succeeded Max Rubner (1854-1932) at the Department of Hygiene. Flügge was a colleague of Robert Koch (1843-1910), and two of his better-known assistants were Wolfgang Weichardt (1875-1943) and Walther Kruse (1864-1943).

Carl Flügge is remembered for advocating hygiene as an independent medical discipline, as well as his 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 are sprayed in the air. This finding was instrumental in Jan Mikulicz-Radecki's (1850-1905) advocacy of surgical gauze masks in 1897.

Among his publications are two important works on hygiene called Lehrbuch der hygienischen Untersuchungsmethoden and Grundriss der Hygiene.

[edit] References

• Textbook of hygienic investigation methods, translated from German
• The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life
• An Illustrated History of Malaria