Ernst Christian Neumann

Franz Ernst Christian Neumann (30 January 1834 – 6 March 1918) was a German pathologist who was a native of Königsberg.

The first recipient of this award was Donald Medcalf from Melbourne ([1]) Ernst Neumann made many contributions in the field of hematology.

[2][3] In 2007, Zech et al. wrote: "The beginning of Stem Cell research can be dated back to Ernst Neumann, who was appointed professor of pathology at Koenigsberg in 1866 and described in a preliminary communication the presence of nucleated red blood cells in bone marrow (BM) saps.

With age, the blood producing activity contracts toward the center of the body, leaving the more peripheral bones with only fatty marrow.

For about 50 years, students of the marrow did not know what to make of this phenomenon"[5] Neumann was supported by Giulio Bizzozero and by Claude Bernard, Alexander Maximov and Artur Pappenheim, but there were also Rudolf Virchow, Paul Ehrlich, Pouchet and Georges Hayem to repudiate him.

The brilliance of the truth may first be blinding, but ultimately it supersedes all artificial illuminators"[6] In 1871, Neumann described congenital epulis (CE) of the newborn.

Neumann also published an early work on medical electrodiagnosis and formed the name "Hämosiderin" as hematological pigment.

Legend of the stem cell-picture: Draft by Ernst Neumann himself, showing the "great-lymphozyt-stem-cell" (1912) or "great-lymphocyt" as stem cell for the postembryonic and embryonic development of erythropoiesis and leukopoiesis in the bone marrow and, as shown here, in the embryonic liver; GrLK: nucleus of great-lymphocyt-stem-cell; Erblk: Erythroblast; (Neumann 1914).

Neumann's farsightedness demanded a stem cell culture for the completion of the quarrel: "Perhaps a final decision will only arrive, if it possible, to isolate the individual colourless cells and to study its life events in vitro culture for some time, as Robert Koch demonstrated with the bacteria" (Neumann 1912, B.P., p. 329).

Neumann was supported by Bizzozero and by Claude Bernard, but there were also Pouchet and Hayem to repudiate him and Robin to accuse him of adding to the confusion by postulating yet another theory.

1992:[10]"Neumann bringt 1880 wiederholt zum Ausdruck, daß sich die Vorstufen von kernhaltigen roten Blutkörperchen postembryonal über die lymphozytäre Stammzelle aus neugebildetem Knochenmark entwickeln" 1994:[11] "Es ist faszinierend, die scharfsinnige Argumentation Ernst Neumanns zu verfolgen, wie er ohne Polemik die komplexe Problematik darstellt ("eine gemeinsame, auch im postembryonalen Leben stets vorkommende groß-lymphozytäre Stammzelle", E.Neumann 1912) und gewissermaßen bis in den letzten Winkel hinein ausdiskutiert".

1995:[12] Until the late nineteenth century blood cell formation was thought to be the prerogative of the lymph nodes or the liver and spleen.