Bowman, Sir William

Bowman, Sir William

(born July 20, 1816, Nantwich, Cheshire, Eng.—died March 29, 1892, near Dorking, Surrey) English surgeon and histologist. His studies of organ tissues with his teacher Robert Todd led to major papers on the structure and function of voluntary muscle and of the kidneys and on the detailed anatomy of the liver. In the kidneys, he found that the capsule (Bowman capsule) surrounding each glomerulus (ball of capillaries) in the nephrons is a continuous part of the renal duct. This was of prime importance to his filtration theory of urine formation, key to understanding kidney function. Bowman and Todd published The Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man (2 vol., 1845–56), a pioneering work in both physiology and histology. Turning to the eye, Bowman became one of the world's foremost ophthalmic research scientists, London's outstanding eye surgeon, and the first to describe several eye structures and their functions.