Müller, Johannes Peter

Müller, Johannes Peter (yōhän`əs pā`tər mŭl`ər), 1801–58, German physiologist and anatomist. From 1833 until the end of his career he was professor at Berlin. He was famed as a teacher; for his extensive research in many fields, including embryology, general and microscopic pathology, biochemistry, comparative anatomy, psychology, and marine zoology; and for his theories on color vision and voice production. As a result of his experiments in neurology he proposed the law of specific energies, i.e., that each sensory nerve produces its own specific sensation (e.g., any stimulation to the optic nerve results in a sensation of light).

---

Müller, Johannes Peter

(born July 14, 1801, Koblenz, France—died April 28, 1858, Berlin, Ger.) German physiologist, comparative anatomist, and natural philosopher. He studied at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin and later taught at both. His discovery that each sense organ responds to stimuli differently implied that external events are perceived only by the changes they produce in sensory systems. His investigations in physiology, evolution, and comparative anatomy contributed to knowledge of reflexes, the secretion and coagulation processes, the composition of blood and lymph, vision, and hearing. His studies of tumour cell structure began to establish pathological histology as a branch of science.