He studied at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Würzburg, where he was a student of Albert von Kölliker.
In 1855 he obtained his PhD with the thesis "Symbolae ad Trematodum evolutionis historiam",[1] then in 1857 received his medical doctorate.
[2] In 1875, he was named a full professor and successor to Max Schultze as director of the anatomical institute at Bonn.
[4] Some sources mention La Valette-St. George as the first to observe what would later be known as the Golgi apparatus (1865, 1867), a structure that he reportedly described in the sexual cells of snails.
[5][6][7] With Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz (from 1874) and Oscar Hertwig (from 1889), he was co-editor of the journal "Archiv für mikroskopische Anatomie".