Franz Christian Boll

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Franz Christian Boll (February 26, 1849 - December 19, 1879) was a German physiologist and histologist who was a native of Neubrandenburg. He was the son of Lutheran theologian Franz Boll (1805-1875).

Boll studied medicine in Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin, and in 1870 worked at the physiological institute of Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) in Berlin. Later he became a professor at the University of Genoa, and from 1873 to 1879 was a professor of physiology in Rome. He died in Rome on December 19, 1879 at the age of 30.

Franz Christian Boll is remembered for the discovery of rhodopsin, when he noticed that the light-sensitive pigment in the rods of the retina had a tendency to fade in the presence of illumination. He published his findings in an article titled Sull'anatomia e fistologia della retina, and reported his discovery to the Berlin Academy on November 12, 1876.

His name is associated with the eponymous "Boll cells", which are basal cells in the lacrimal gland, and as a student of Max Schultze (1825-1874) at Bonn he wrote an important histological treatise on dental pulp called Untersuchungen über die Zahnpulpa.