- Alfred Leber
Alfred Theodor Leber (1881 - 1954) was a German
ophthalmologist who was a nephew of renowned ophthalmologist Theodor Leber (1840-1917). Alfred Leber is considered to be the founder of German tropicalophthalmology .He studied at the
Berlin Eye Clinic under Julius von Michel (1843-1911), and in 1910-11 withparasitologist Stanislaus von Prowazek (1875-1915) of the Hamburg Tropical Institute, was a member of a scientific expedition to Samoa, where he worked as a private lecturer. It was here that Leber discovered the effects on the eye caused byfilaria l infections by the parasite "Wuchereria bancrofti ". In 1912 he worked as a senior physician under Arthur von Hippel (1841-1916) atGöttingen .In 1913-14 he took part in the "Medizinisch-demographische Deutsch-Neuguinea-Expedition" to
German New Guinea with physicianLudwig Külz (1875-1938) and painterEmil Nolde (1867-1956). At the outbreak ofWorld War I , he along with writerMax Dauthendey (1867-1918) were unable to return to Germany, and spent the war years in the neutralDutch East Indies . AtMadang ,Java he became a director in a hospital for eye andtropical diseases , and it was in Leber's clinic that Max Dauthendey died frommalaria in August, 1918.After the war, Leber was unable to procure a position at the
University of Göttingen , so he returned to work in Madang. DuringWorld War II he spent much of his time interred at a camp for German prisoners inDehradun , India, and after his release became head of ophthalmology at the Prince of Wales Hospital inBhopal . In 1952 he became director of the Institute of Ophthalmology atAligarh Muslim University inAligarh .References
* [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1453664 NCBI; Alfred Theodor Leber (1881-1954): a pioneer in tropical ophthalmology]
* "Parts of this article are based on a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia."
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