William Harvey
William Harvey was born in 1578 and educated at Gonville and Caius College (Caius College), Cambridge University and also at the medical school in the University of Padua, Italy where he was taught by the renowned Hieronymus Fabricus. He started a successful medical practice and was appointed to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and physician to James l and his son Charles l. Towards the end of his working life he became Warden of Merton College, Oxford. He studied physiology by dissecting animals and was the first person to offer a consistent account of blood circulation in the body, the role of the heart as a pump and the function of the one-way valves in the veins. He published his work in ‘An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals.’ Although this theory contradicted the then widely accepted hypothesis of Galen it was accepted and Harvey’s work became one of the foundations of modern medicine. Harvey was also the first to propose the foundations of embryology through his studies of the role of sperm in the fertilization of the egg in mammals.
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Location: London, England
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