Hermann Adolph Wülfing-Lüer

Biography

• Born 14 March 1836, Barmen in Westphalia
• Died 1 February 1910, Paris

Key Medical Attributions:

Georges Guillaume Amatus Lüer (1802-1883) (d’instruments de chirurgie, chevalier de la légion d’honneur) was born in Germany and traveled to Paris in 1834. He worked briefly with Swiss-born French surgical instrument maker Joseph-Frédéric-Benoît Charrière (1803-1876) and set up up surgical instrument store ‘Maison Lüer, sur la Place de l’École de Médecine’ in 1837

Hermann Adolph Wülfing married Jeanne Amélie Lüer (daughter of Amatus Lüer) in 1867. Hermann worked on the business side of the factory, and Jeanne on the creative side and in the factory [Reference]

Jeanne, helped by a glassblower named Fournier, developed a ‘two piece graduated, all-glass sterilizable syringe with a tight-fitting ground glass barrel’. Hermann filed multiple patents to protect the invention between 1895-1897.

The Lüer’s met with Maxwell W. Becton and Fairleigh S. Dickinson who purchased the Lüer syringe and set up the Becton Dickinson (BD) surgical equipment company in New Jersey, USA.

Dickinson patented the Luer-lok in 1925, a steel fitting that included the tapered tube at its centre to allow a needle to be locked in place securely with a single twist.[The BD Yale Luer-Lok Syringe]

Medical Eponyms

• Lüer syringe
• Lüer taper
• Lüer-Lok

Major Publications

• Original US patent HA Wulfing-Lüer 1896 [IMAGE]

Controversies

• Unlikely that Hermann Adolph Wülfing actually invented the Luer syringe, more likely it was his wife Jeanne Amélie Lüer in 1895

References

• Sella A. Lüer’s syringe. Chemistry World
  
• Hermann Adolph Wülfing-Lüer – Patent US583382 A
• Lüer Family Grave: [Overview] [Image] [Family Luer Detail/translation]