Albrecht (more precisely Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Albrecht) von Graefe (Fig. 1) was born on May 22, 1828 in Finkenheerd, Brandenburg, and died on July 20, 1870 in Berlin. He was the son of Auguste von Alten (1797–1857) and Carl Ferdinand von Graefe (1787–1840). Graefe’s parents were wealthy and familiar with Austrian and Polish upper-class society. They were cosmopolitans. [7]. His father was born in Warsaw, where their family received nobility. He became a respected professor, surgeon and early ophthalmologist. He is considered the father of modern facial plastic surgery. He introduced many reconstructive operations, including cleft palate operation, plastic surgery of the nose. [8]. He held the position of director of German military hospitals during the Napoleonic wars and was director of the surgical clinic at the University of Berlin from 1810 to 1840. [9].

Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Albrecht von Graefe (22.05.1828 – 20.07.1870).

Albrecht received his elementary education from private teachers. After its completion, he attended the French gymnasium in Berlin. He graduated with honors at the age of 15. From 1843 to 1847 he studied medicine, where he also learned logic, philosophy, natural sciences and anatomy. His teachers included: Johannes Müller (1801–1858), leading physiologist of the nineteenth century, Johann Lukas Schönlein (1793–1864), remembered for his work on IgA vasculitis (Henoch–Schönlein purpura), Moritz Heinrich Romberg (1795–1873), neurologist who described the Romberg sign, and Rudolf Virchow (1821–1903), the famous pathologist (“Virchow’s trias”). In 1847, he received his doctorate on the basis of his thesis “De bromo ejusque praeparatis.” (“Of bromine and its preparations”). In the winter of 1847/48 he passed the state exam with a grade of “exemplary good”, and in 1848, he went to Prague to be trained under Carl Ferdinand von Arlt (1812–1887). Beginning his trip to Prague, von Graefe was undecided on which field of medicine he would pursue, but after observing Arlt’s ophthalmic skills, he made up his mind that ophthalmology would be his field.

Later, he left Prague for Paris, where he learned experimental physiology, including extraocular muscles and optic nerve function with Claude Bernard (1813–1878), major European physiologist of that time. In Paris, he was also a regular visitor to the ophthalmology clinic of Jules Sichel (1802–1868), where he also met Louis-Auguste Desmarres (1810–1882). He then studied in Vienna in years 1849–1850 under Christopher Friedrich Jäger Ritter von Jaxtthal (1784–1871) and Eduard Jaeger Ritter von Jaxtthal (1818–1884), which gave him extensive opportunities to develop ophthalmic practice. He then went to London to Moorfields Eye Hospital, where he met William Bowman (1816–1892), George Critchett (1817–1882). He also met in London Franciscus Cornelis Donders (1818–1889), with whom Graefe became friends and began collaborating in research [7, 10].

In 1850, Graefe returned to Berlin richer in medical and scientific knowledge. He opened his own clinic, which was based on observations of French clinics. At the clinic, Graefe was involved not only in the clinical work, but also in teaching, and research [11]. In the future years, when he became internationally recognized, representatives of science and medicine from all over the world visited the clinic. In 1852, he received his habilitation based on his work entitled “Über die Wirkung der Augenmuskeln”(About the action of the eye muscles). In 1857, he founded the German Ophthalmological Society, which is the oldest scientific society in the world. In the same year he was appointed associate professor of ophthalmology in Berlin – the first German professor of eye diseases, while in 1866 he was appointed full professor [10]. He also became a unique figure in the international arena, presiding over and dominating the entire Third International Congress of Ophthalmology, held in Paris in 1867 [12,13,14].

Von Graefe tended to study ophthalmology in all its glory. However, there were certain areas in which he took a special interest. His student Julius Hirschberg (1843–1925) introduced them as follows:

The first period until 1857 – he was interested in conjunctival diseases, sensory physiology and strabismus. In 1851, he was one of the first to use the ophthalmoscope invented by Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894);

The second period until 1863 – he dealt with glaucoma and introduced peripheral iridectomy for the treatment of glaucoma in 1857. The introduction of iridectomy is considered one of Graefe’s greatest ophthalmological discoveries;

The third period lasted until his death – Graefe was involved in glaucoma and cataract removal [15].

At the age of 33, he contracted acute pulmonary tuberculosis, as a result of which he died in 1870 at just 42 years old. He left behind his wife Anna Knuth and five children.