Alexander Carl Otto Westphal (1863-1941) was the son of the psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal

Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal

Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal was a German neurologist and psychiatrist from Berlin. He was the son of Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal and Karoline Friederike Heine and the father of Alexander Carl Otto Westphal...

 (1833-1890) and Clara Mendelssohn and the grandson of Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal

Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal

Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal , a prominent physician and Geheimer Sanitätsrath , wrote on the human eye and on optics. He was interested in environmental impacts on eyesight, including light quality, and argued that eyeglasses should be tailored to occupation...

.

Alexander Westphal studied at Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

 and Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 receiving his doctorate at Berlin in 1888. Westphal then became an assistant to both Wilhelm Heinrich Erb

Wilhelm Heinrich Erb

Wilhelm Heinrich Erb was a German neurologist who was a native of Winnweiler, Rhineland-Palatinate.- Academic career :...

 (1840-1921) and Hans Curschmann

Hans Curschmann

Hans Curschmann was a German physician and neurologist remembered for Curschmann-Batten-Steinert syndrome. He attended universities in Freiberg, Leipzig and Munich, earning his doctorate in 1900. From 1900 to 1907 he worked in Leipzig, Heidelberg, Berlin and Tübingen, and from 1907 to 1916 he was...

 (1875-1950) in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

. In 1892 he became the head physician of the department for nervous diseases at the Berlin Charité

Charité

The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for both the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After the merger with their fourth campus in 2003, the Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe....

 under Friedrich Jolly

Friedrich Jolly

Friedrich Jolly was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who was a native of Heidelberg, and the son of physicist Philipp von Jolly ....

 (1844-1904), and qualified in psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

 and neurology

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

 in 1894. In 1902 he accepted an invitation to Greifswald

Greifswald

Greifswald , officially, the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald is a town in northeastern Germany. It is situated in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, at an equal distance of about from Germany's two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg. The town borders the Baltic Sea, and is crossed...

 as professor extraordinary, and in 1904 went to Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

 as full professor.

Westphal contributed to the literature on diabetes insipidus

Diabetes insipidus

Diabetes insipidus is a condition characterized by excessive thirst and excretion of large amounts of severely diluted urine, with reduction of fluid intake having no effect on the concentration of the urine. There are several different types of DI, each with a different cause...

, leukaemia and pseudoleukaemia, as well as a variety of topics in psychiatry and neurology. He is eponymously associated with the Westphal-Piltz syndrome (neurotonic pupillary reaction) and the Westphal-Bernhard syndrome (primary-stenosing papillitis.) Westphal also occasioned a complete edition of his fathers' scientific works. He trained a number of significant scientists, including Otto Lowenstein

Otto Lowenstein

Otto Lowenstein was a German-American psychiatrist who was a native of Osnabrück.In 1914 he received his medical degree from the University of Bonn, and after serving as military physician in World War I, returned to Bonn as a neuropsychiatric assistant to Alexander Westphal...

(1889-1965).

Source

• Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology - Fulltext: Volume 25(1) March 2005 p 44-49 Otto Lowenstein, Pioneer Pupillographer. at www.jneuro-ophthalmology.com