Robert Remak

Robert Remak (July 26 1815 - August 29 1865) was a Polish/German embryologist, physiologist, and neurologist, born in Posen, Prussia. Dr. Remak obtained his medical degree from Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin in 1838 specializing in neurology. He is best known for reducing Karl Ernst von Baer's four germ layers to three: the ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm. He also discovered unmyelinated nerve fibres and the nerve cells in the heart sometimes called Remak's ganglia. He studied under Johannes Muller at the University of Berlin.

Despite his accomplishments, because of his Jewish faith he was repeatedly denied full professor status until late in life, and even then was denied the usual benefits of the position.

His son Ernst Julius Remak was also a neurologist and his grandson was the mathematician Robert Remak who died in Auschwitz in 1942.