Max Johann Sigismund Schultze
Max Johann Sigismund Schultze
Born	March 25, 1825 Freiburg
Died	January 16, 1874
Nationality	German
Fields	anatomist
Alma mater	Halle

Max Johann Sigismund Schultze (March 25, 1825 - January 16, 1874), German microscopic anatomist, was born at Freiburg in Breisgau (Baden).

He studied medicine at Greifswald and Berlin, and was appointed extraordinary professor at Halle in 1854 and five years later ordinary professor of anatomy and histology and director of the Anatomical Institute at Bonn. He died at Bonn on the 16th of January 1874.

He founded, in 1865, and edited the important Archiv für mikroskopische Anatomie, to which he contributed many papers, and he advanced the subject generally, by refining on its technical methods. His works included:

• Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Turbellarien (1851)
• Uber den Organismus der Polythalamien (1854)
• Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Landplanarien (1857)
• Zur Kenntnis der elektrischen Organe der Fische (1858)
• Ein heizbarer Objecttisch und seine Verwendung bei Untersuchungen des Blutes^[1] (1865, in which the first known description of the platelet)
• Zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Retina (1866)

His name is especially known for his work on the cell theory. Uniting Félix Dujardin's conception of animal sarcode with Hugo von Mohl's of vegetable protoplasma, he pointed out their identity, and included them under the common name of protoplasm, defining the cell as a nucleated mass of protoplasm with or without a cell-wall (Das Protoplasma der Rhizopoden und der Pflanzenzellen; ein Beiträg zur Theorie der Zelle, 1863).

German zoologist (1825–1874)

Schultze was born at Freiberg in Germany. He was educated at the University of Griefswald, where his father was professor of anatomy, and the University of Berlin. After a brief period on the staff of the University of Halle he moved in 1859 to Bonn where he served as professor of zoology until his sudden death in 1874 from a perforated ulcer.

In 1861 Schultze, who had worked on the cellular structure of a wide variety of animals, published a famous paper in which he emphasized the role of protoplasm in the workings of the cell. Cells, he argued, were ‘nucleated protoplasm’ or ‘the physical basis of life’, the protoplasm and not the cell wall being the important constituent. This he illustrated by pointing out that some cells, for example those of the embryo, do not have bounding membranes.

In 1866 Schultze went on to formulate the so-called duplicity theory of vision. He had noticed that in diurnal birds the retina consisted mainly of cones but nocturnal birds possessed a retina with an abundance of rods. This led him to propose that cones must respond to colored light while rods should be more sensitive to black and white.

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

1. ^ Schultze M. Ein heizbarer Objecttisch und seine Verwendung bei Untersuchungen des Blutes. Arch Mikrosc Anat 1865;1:1-42.