Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker

Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker (May 3, 1828 - February 7, 1890) was a German ophthalmologist who was born near Ratzeburg. In 1859 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied under Carl Ferdinand von Arlt (1812-1887). Beginning in 1867 he was a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg.

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Becker was a pioneer in ophthalmic pathology, and created numerous writings concerning the eye. Among his many published works, he completed Arlt's autobiography Meine Erlebnisse after his former teachers' death in 1887. In 1866 he published a German edition of Franciscus Cornelis Donders' (1818-1889) Die Anomalien der Accommodation und Refraktion des Auges (On the Anomalies of Accommodation and Refraction of the Eye). He also published anatomist Heinrich Müller's (1820-1864) medical papers in a collection titled Heinrich Müller's gesammelte und hinterlassene Schriften zur Anatomie und Physiologie des Auges.

In 1887 Becker established the Graefe Museum at the University of Heidelberg in honor of oculist Albrecht von Graefe (1828-1870). He is also credited with introducing the concept cataracta complicata to describe lenticular changes that often appear in various ocular diseases, and are generally characterized by punctate, striate or diffuse opacities. Two ophthalmic eponyms that contain his name are:

• Becker's phenomenon: Pulsation of the retinal arteries in Basedow's disease.
• Becker's test: A test for astigmatism that uses diagrams of sets of three lines radiating in different meridians.

References

• Who Named It; Otto Becker