Biography of Friedrich Jolly
Friedrich Jolly came from a family that had migrated from France to Baden, Germany. He was the son of the physicist Philipp Jolly, who is eponymously remembered for a device, now largely obsolete, for determining the specific gravity of solids and liquids.
Jolly studied in Munich and Göttingen where he, under Georg Meissner (1829-1905), published his first scientific work already in his 4th term. He obtained his doctorate in Munich in 1867 and, influenced by Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-1868) and Aloys von Gudden (1824-1886), turned to neurology and psychiatry. In 1868 he became assistant under Gudden and Hubert von Grashey (1839-1914) at the lunatic asylum Werneck, in 1870 assistant to Franz von Rinecker (1811-1883) at the Irrenabteilung of the Julius-Spital in Würzburg.
Jolly was habilitated in Würzburg in 1871, and already in 1873 became professor extraordinary and director of the psychiatric clinic in Strassburg, in 1874 full professor of psychiatry. In 1890 he was called to Berlin to succeed Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890) as ordentlicher öffentlicher professor at the medical faculty as well as director of the psychiatric and nerve clinic of the royal Charité. He was also privy medical counsellor at Heidelberg.
Jolly’s work concerns a wide variety of anatomical and medical questions as well as questions of the care for the mentally ill.