Weber, Ernst Heinrich 1795-1878
German physiologist

He was born in Wittenberg, the brother of Wilhelm Weber, and studied at the University of Wittenberg and later at Leipzig University. He was appointed to the chair of human anatomy (1818), and then the chair of physiology (1840). He undertook extensive comparative embryological and palaeontological studies, especially on the middle ear of mammals. He also demonstrated that the digestive juices are the specific products of glands, thereby opening up major new fields of physiological and chemical research. In the study of sensory functions, especially skin sensitivity, he probed what was later to be called the sensory 'threshold'. He devised a method of determining and quantifying the sensitivity of the skin, enunciated in 1834, and gave his name to the Weber-Fechner law of the increase of stimuli.