Marquis Alfonso Corti was born in Pavia (Italy) in 1822.
In 1840 he moved from his home-town to study in medicine at Padova University.
In 1846 he moved to Vienna, where he received the degree in medicine in 1847
under the supervision of the ungarian anatomist Josef Hyrtls, with a thesis
on the bloodstream system of a reptile. With the outbreak of the revolution
of 1848, Hyrtsl's Institute was occupied by soldiers and Corti lost his manuscripts
and anatomical preparations. This episode caused his return to Italy for a short period.
In 1849 he began to work on the mammalian auditory system at the Koelliker Laboratory
in Würzburg (Germany). In 1851 his paper Recherches sur l'organ de l'ouïe des mammiferes -
describing the sensory epithelium resting on the basilar membrane,
the stria vascularis, the tectorial membrane and the
spiral ganglion - was published in the Koelliker and Siebold's review
Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie.
In the same year, after the death of his father, he inherited father's title
and estate and moved back to Pavia,where he lost scientific interest
and gave up research. He died in 1876. (Photo above is courtesy of Dr Dieter Leithäuser, Warburg,
Germany).
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