Siegmund Mayer

Siegmund Mayer (December 27, 1842 - September, 1910) was a German physiologist.

Mayer was born in Bochtheim near Worms. He studied in Heidelberg, Gießen and Tübingen, where he obtained his doctorate in 1865. He subsequently worked with Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894) in Heidelberg, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (1816-1895) and Julius Friedrich Cohnheim (1839-1884) in Leipzig, and with Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke (1819-1892) in Vienna. He was habilitated for physiology at Vienna in 1869, but already the next year he moved to become Karl Ewald Konstantin Hering's (1834-1918) assistant in Prague. Here he made a fine career, becoming professor extraordinary in 1872 and ordinarius in 1887. From 1880 he headed the newly founded institute of histology.

Mayer made several important contributions particularly concerning the physiology of the heart and vessels, respiration and intestines. In addition to his journal papers, he contributed to Salomon Stricker's (1834-1898) "Handbuch der Lehre von den Geweben des Menschen und der Thiere" (1872) and Ludimar Hermann's (1838-1914) "Handbuch der Physiologie" (1879).

Mayer died September 1910 in Prague.