Fritz Richard Schaudinn was born in Roesiningken in East Prussia in 1871 and died in 1906, crowding into an investigative career of only a dozen years a tremendous number of significant contributions, particularly in protozoology. The discovery of the Spirochaeta pallida (Treponema pallidum) of syphilis was his great achievement. Although never actively associated with a medical institute his studies on amebic infestation, hookworm disease, and tertian malaria were of major clinical interest.1
Following upper-class schooling, Schaudinn entered the University of Berlin in 1890, with the intent of studying philology. However, his interest shifted to zoology in the university, and the doctorate in philosophy was granted, with a thesis on the description of a new species and a new genus of a marine Foraminifera. The demonstration that the two forms of the many-chambered marine organisms, those with a large and with a small embryonal chamber represented two stages in the