Gabriel Valentin

Gabriel Gustav Valentin was a German-Swiss physiologist and histologist, a pupil of Jan Evangelista Purkinje, who made early discoveries on nerve tissue, ciliary motion, blood cells and glandular function. He was Jewish and became the first Jew appointed to a full professorship at a German-speaking university, at Bern in 1836, at a time when such positions were closed to Jews elsewhere. He was a foundational figure of nineteenth-century physiology.