page_title: Rudolf Virchow
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Rudolf Virchow / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (1821-1902) and Rose Mayer (1832-1913) in 1851 in Germany
context_page_description: Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder of social medicine, and to his colleagues, the "Pope of medicine". He received the Copley Medal in 1892. He was a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, but he declined to be ennobled as "von Virchow".
  Virchow studied medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University under Johannes Peter Müller. He worked at the Charité hospital under Robert Froriep, whom he succeeded as the prosector. His investigation of the 1847–1848 typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia laid the foundation for public health in Germany, and paved his political and social careers. From it, he coined a well known aphorism: "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale". He participated in the Revolution of 1848, which led to his expulsion from Charité the next year. He then published a newspaper Die Medizinische Reform. He took the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Würzburg in 1849.
context_section_description: On 24 August 1850 in Berlin, Virchow married Ferdinande Rosalie Mayer (29 February 1832 – 21 February 1913), a liberal's daughter. They had three sons and three daughters:
  Karl Virchow (1 August 1851 – 21 September 1912), a chemist
  Hans Virchow (de) (10 September 1852 – 7 April 1940), an anatomist
  Adele Virchow (1 October 1855 – 18 May 1955), the wife of Rudolf Henning, a professor of German studies
  Ernst Virchow (24 January 1858 – 5 April 1942)
  Marie Virchow (29 June 1866 – 23 October 1951), the wife of Carl Rabl, an Austrian anatomist
  Hanna Elisabeth Maria Virchow (10 May 1873 – 28 November 1963)
  Virchow was an agnostic .
caption: Rudolf and Rose Virchow in 1851
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