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Pharmacy tradition in Marburg

Pharmacy has a long-standing tradition at the University of Marburg. Already in 1609, Johannes Hartmann (1568-1631) was appointed to the chair of Chymiatry, who interpreted this subject as a pharmaceutically-medically oriented chemistry.

In 1851, a Pharmaceutical-Chemical Institute was established. Through the appointment of Albert Wigand as Professor of Pharmacognosy at Philipps University Marburg, Pharmaceutical Biology was established as a further pharmaceutical subject in 1851.

In 1885, Ernst Schmidt (1845-1921) took over the Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He founded a scientific school here and was considered the "father of Pharmaceutical Chemistry" already during his lifetime. Schmidt's successor, Johannes Gadamer (1867-1928), continued his teacher's school.

In 1946, Horst Böhme (1908-1996) was appointed to Marburg, who also had a formative effect on the school. Under Böhme, the Department of Pharmacy experienced a scientific-organizational differentiation into five institutes, earlier than at other universities - in addition to the already existing Institutes of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Biology, Pharmaceutical Technology, Pharmacology for Natural Scientists and History of Pharmacy were established as independent subjects - which to this day offers Marburg’s Department of Pharmacy the opportunity to work on pharmaceutical questions from different perspectives.

The Marburg pharmaceutical historian Rudolf Schmitz (1918-1992) also had a school-forming effect, establishing a postgraduate course for doctoral students in the field of the History of Pharmacy, which enabled a high standard of work at his Institute.

The Institute for the History of Pharmacy, founded in Marburg in 1965, has remained the only one of its kind in Germany and has set the international standard in the field of pharmaceutical historiography.