Karl Bernhard Lehmann

Who was Karl Bernhard Lehmann?

Karl Bernhard Lehmann was a German hygienist and bacteriologist born in Zurich. He was a brother to publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann.

Lehmann studied medicine at the University of Munich, where one of his instructors was Max von Pettenkofer. In 1886 he received his habilitation, and from 1894 to 1932 was a professor of hygiene at the University of Würzburg.

He is remembered for pioneer toxicological research he performed with Ferdinand Flury, of which the exposure limits of various substances encountered in the workplace were tested and defined. Their research formed a basis of what would later be known as MAK values in Germany.

In the field of microbiology he was co-author with Rudolf Otto Neumann of Atlas und Grundriss der Bakteriologie, a manual/textbook which over several editions described a number of new bacterial species.