Franciscus Donders

Franciscus Cornelis Donders
230px Franciscus Cornelis Donders
Born	27 May 1818 Tilburg
Died	24 March 1889 (1889-03-25) (aged 70) Utrecht
Nationality	Dutch
Fields	ophthalmology
Institutions	Utrecht University
Known for	eye diseases

Franciscus (Franz) Cornelius Donders FRS FRSE (27 May 1818, in Tilburg – 24 March 1889, in Utrecht) was a Dutch ophthalmologist. During his career, he was a professor of physiology in Utrecht, and was internationally regarded as an authority on eye diseases, directing the Netherlands Hospital for Eye Patients. Along with Graefe and Helmholtz, he was one of the primary founders of scientific ophthalmology.

Life

He was born in Tilburg in the Netherlands the son of Jan Franz Donders and Agnes Elizabeth Hegh. He was educated at Duizel School and seminaries in both Tilburg and Boxmeer.

For several years the young Donders studied at the Royal Dutch Hospital for Military Medicine in Utrecht, then earning his M.D. in 1840 from the University of Leiden. Following a stint as a medical officer in the Hague, in 1842 he was appointed as a lecturer in physiology and anatomy at the Utrecht military medical school. In 1847 he became an associate professor at Utrecht University, and in 1862 attained a full professorship in physiology. In 1847 he became correspondent of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, when that became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1851 he joined as member.

He is known for his work and research of eye disease, and was among the first practitioners of the ophthalmoscope. He is credited with invention of an impression tonometer (1862), and for introduction of prismatic and cylindrical lenses for treatment of astigmatism (1860).

Donders also was the first to use differences in human reaction time to infer differences in cognitive processing. He tested both simple reaction time and choice reaction time, finding that simple reaction was faster. This concept is now one of the central tenets of cognitive psychology— while mental chronometry is not a topic in itself, it is one of the most common tools used for making inferences about processes such as learning, memory, and attention.

Donders founded the Nederlands Gasthuis voor Behoeftige en Minvermogende Ooglijders ( in short: Ooglijdersgasthuis) - the Netherlands Hospital for Necessitous Eye-Patients in 1858. His first associate was Herman Snellen. In 1864 he published the highly acclaimed "On the anomalies of accommodation and refraction of the eye".

His name is associated with "Donders' law", which states that "the rotation of the eyeball is determined by the distance of the object from the median plane and the line of the horizon". He is also well recognized in the dental community for naming the "space of Donders", the space between the dorsum of the tongue and the hard palate when the mandible is at rest.

He died in Utrecht on 24 March 1889.

Family

He married twice: first in 1845 to Ernestine Zimmerman (d.1887); secondly in 1888 to Abrahamine Arnolda Louisa Hubrecht.

References

• den Tonkelaar, Isolde, Harold E. Henkes and Gijsbert K. van Leersum (1996) - Eye and instruments : Nineteenth-century ophthalmological instruments in the Netherlands. Amsterdam : Batavian Lion. ISBN 90 6707 400 4. 304 pgs.

External links

• Works by Franciscus Cornelis Donders at Project Gutenberg
• B. Theunissen. Franciscus Cornelis Donders 1818-1889, F.C. Donders: turning refracting into science, @ History of science and scholarship in the Netherlands.
• Picture, biography, bibliography and digitized sources in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
• P. Eling, Donders, Frans (1818-1889), Geneeskundige en fysioloog.
• Edwin Maes, Professor dr. Franciscus Cornelis Donders (Tilburg 27-5-1818, Utrecht 24-3-1889) Gravesite of Franciscus Donders.
• Obituary in: