His came from a patrician family and studied medicine in Basel, Berlin (under Johannes Peter Müller and Robert Remak), Würzburg (under Rudolf Virchow and Albert von Kölliker), Bern, Vienna and Paris.

[1] In 1855, he was the first to describe the tubercles in the human foetus which coalesce to form the outer ear; these are known as the "hillocks of His".

The passage runs [original in German]: "Until it has been refuted, I stand by the statement that characters can not be inherited that were acquired during the lifetime of the individual".

By 1895, Wilhem His, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Leipzig, had published a three-dimensional reconstruction of Johann Sebastian Bach's face from the skull based on his precise measurements of facial tissue depths of cadaver heads.

The displacement of the rubber was measured and recorded for 15 specific locations on 24 male and four female suicide victims along with nine men who died of wasting illnesses.