Name Peter Panum Education University of Wurzburg | Children Hortense Panum | |
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Died May 2, 1885, Copenhagen, Denmark | ||
Peter Ludvig Panum (19 December 1820 – 2 May 1885) was a Danish physiologist and pathologist born on the island of Bornholm in Rønne. The Panum Institute in Copenhagen is named in his honor.
During 1846 he was chosen by the government to undertake research of a measles epidemic in the Faroe Islands. As a result of his investigations he published a classic treatise titled "Observations Made During the Epidemic of Measles on the Faroe Islands in the Year 1846". Later he studied with Rudolf Virchow at the University of Würzburg (1851), and with Claude Bernard in Paris (1852–53).
From 1855 he was a professor at the University of Kiel, where he established a laboratory for physiology. Troubled by anti-Danish sentiment at Kiel, he relocated to the University of Copenhagen during 1862, where he spent the remainder of his career. Among his students at Copenhagen were physiologist Christian Bohr (1855-1911) and zymologist Emil Christian Hansen (1842-1909).
Panum is acknowledged as being the first person to perform systematic and scientific studies of endotoxin, a substance once referred to as "putrid poison" that was thought to be responsible for symptoms and signs observed in individuals with sepsis.
From his studies of binocular vision, the eponymous "Panum's fusional area" is obtained. The term is defined as the region of binocular single vision. Outside of Panum’s fusional area, physiological diplopia occurs.