Johann Otto Leonhard Heubner

Heubner's artery (also known as the recurrent artery of Heubner or Medial Striate A.), named after the German paediatrician Johann Otto Leonhard Heubner is a branch from the anterior cerebral artery, typically from the proximal A2 segment or distal A1 segment, or at the level of the optic chiasm

Johann Otto Leonhardt Heubner (1843-1926), who described this artery in 1872, is better known as the father of German pediatrics. He was appointed to the first professorship in Germany exclusively devoted to pediatrics at the Charité Children's Clinic of Berlin University. Although he initially studied internal medicine in Leipzig under Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich and Ernst Leberecht Wagner, his early research involved anatomical studies of the circulation of the brain, from which he described syphilitic endarteritis (Heubner's disease). Finding morphological studies inconclusive, he turned to more physiological experiments. Together with the physiologist Max Rubner, Heubner performed important studies on energy metabolism in infancy, creating the notion of the nutrition quotient. In this article the authors review Heubner's life and scientific discoveries. ¹⁾.