Arthur Biedl

Who was Arthur Biedl?

Arthur Biedl was an Hungarian pathologist born in what today is Comloşu Mic, Romania.

He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, and from 1893 served as an assistant to Salomon Stricker, Philipp Knoll and Richard Paltauf at the institute of experimental pathology in Vienna. In 1899 he became an associate professor, followed by a full professorship in 1902.

He is considered a founder of modern endocrinology. In 1910, Biedl published a landmark textbook on endocrinology called Innere Sekretion, which was a thorough study on glands and their secretions.

In 1922, he described his studies of two sisters who had retinitis pigmentosa, polydactyly, hypogonadism as well as obesity. Two years earlier Georges Bardet at the University of Paris described the same symptoms in two sisters unrelated to Biedl's findings. This syndrome is now called the Bardet-Biedl syndrome after the two men.

A similar disease was originally named the "Laurence-Moon-Bardet-Biedl syndrome", together with two English physicians, John Zachariah Laurence and Robert Charles Moon. Today this disease has been shortened to become the Laurence-Moon syndrome, while the Bardet-Biedl syndrome is recognized as a separate entity.