Wolfgang Weichardt

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Julius Wolfgang Weichardt (May 13, 1875 - 1943) was a German bacteriologist who was a native of Altenburg, Thüringen. In 1900 he received his doctorate at Breslau, where he became an assistant to Carl Flügge (1847-1923) at the laboratory for hygiene and bacteriology. Afterwards he was an assistant in Dresden under pathologist Christian Georg Schmorl (1861-1932), in Paris at the Pasteur Institute under Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845-1916), in Hamburg under American-born hygienist William Philipps Dunbar (1863-1922), and at the Berlin institute of hygiene under Max Rubner (1854-1932).

In 1905 Weichardt was habilitated for hygiene and experimental therapy at the University of Erlangen, where he later became a professor and director of the Bayerische Bakteriologische Untersuchungsanstalt. He made contributions in his research of anaphylaxis, metabolism and fatigue. Weickardt postulated that there was a specific "toxin of fatigue", and performed numerous experiments in the early 20th century involving chemical antitoxins to battle fatigue.

• Associated eponym:
• Weichardt's reaction: Test based on the change of surface tension when antigen and antibody react with each other in specific dilutions.

[edit] References

• Julius Wolfgang Weichardt @ Who Named It
• Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport