Johannes Peter Müller
Ranke studied at the Universities of Berlin, Leipzig, Erlangen, and Tübingen. At Erlangen, he was a student of the chemist Eugen von Gorup-Besánez, and at Berlin, he was an assistant to physiologist Johannes Peter Müller (1849–50). In 1851 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation involving physiological-chemical studies on the behaviour of some organic substances in humans.