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Wilhelm Kühne (March 28, 1837 - June 10, 1900), German physiologist, was born in Hamburg.
After attending the gymnasium in Lüneburg, he went to Göttingen, where his master in chemistry was Friedrich Wohler and in physiology Rudolph Wagner. Having graduated in 1856, he studied under various famous physiologists, including Emil du Bois-Reymond at Berlin, Claude Bernard in Paris, and KFW Ludwig and EW von Brücke in Vienna.
At the end of 1863 he was put in charge of the chemical department of the pathological laboratory at Berlin, under Rudolf Virchow; in 1868 he was appointed professor of physiology at Amsterdam; and in 1871 he was chosen to succeed Hermann von Helmholtz in the same capacity at Heidelberg, where he died on the 10th of June 1900.
His original work falls into two main groups, the physiology of muscle and nerve, which occupied the earlier years of his life, and the chemistry of digestion, which he began to investigate while at Berlin with Virchow. He was also known for his researches on vision and the chemical changes occurring in the retina under the influence of light. The visual purple, described by Franz Christian Boll in 1876, he attempted to make the basis of a photochemical theory of vision, but though he was able to establish its importance in connexion with vision in light of low intensity, its absence from the retinal area of most distinct vision detracted from the completeness of the theory and precluded its general acceptance.
He also coined the term enzyme[1].
Ida Henrietta Hyde (1857-1945) wanted to study physiology under Dr. Kuhne at the University Heidelberg on the recommendation of Professor Alexander Goette at Strasbourg. The University accepted her, but Dr. Willhelm Kuhne refused to allow her in lectures and laboratories. He is reported to have said that he would never allow “skirts” in his classes. However, when a colleague asked him whether, if at the end of the course she could pass the examination, he would grant her the degree, he jokingly replied that he would. And so for six semesters, she had to study physiology independent of the classroom and of hands-on laboratory projects, using only his assistants’ notes and lab sketches. Finally, a four-hour oral examination by Kuhne’s academic committee, proved her worthiness. The “Summa Cum Laude” degree, the highest honors, could not go to a woman, so Kuhne invented a new phrase: “Multa Cum Laude Superavit “she overcame with much praise.”
Hyde completed the PhD at Heidelberg in 1896, the first woman to receive one for this type of work. Dr. Kuhne recommended her for a position at the Heidelberg-supported research program at the Naples Marine Biological Laboratory in Naples Italy, where she studied the nature and function of salivary glands. She was a life member of this organization, and its secretary from 1897 to 1900.
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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