Friedrich Fülleborn

Life & Legacy

Friedrich Fülleborn (September 13, 1866 – September 9, 1933) was a physician who specialized in tropical medicine and parasitology. He was a native of Kulm, West Prussia, which today is known as Chełmno, Poland.
He studied medicine and natural sciences in Berlin, where one of his instructors was Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer (1835–1921). From 1896 onward, he was a military physician assigned to the Schutztruppe in German East Africa. In 1898–1900 he participated in the Nyassa- und Kingagebirgs Expedition to the southern part of the colony, where he conducted anthropological and ethnographic research.
In 1901 he became director of the Department of Tropical Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the Hamburg Institute for Marine and Tropical Diseases. In 1908 he was appointed by Georg Thilenius (1868–1937) of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology to head the "Hamburg South Seas Expedition", a scientific mission to the South Pacific. In 1930 he succeeded Bernhard Nocht (1857–1945) as director of the Hamburg Institute for Marine and Tropical Diseases, a position he maintained until his death in 1933.
During his career he took several tropical medical study trips to India, East Asia, the West Indies, etc. He is especially known for his filarian research and as an instructor of tropical medicine classes in Hamburg.
While working with dogs in Hamburg, he described "autoinfection" and discovered the migratory route taken by the parasite Strongyloides stercoralis prior to ending up in the intestine. The term "Fülleborn's method" is a procedure for examining parasitic ova in faecal matter.