Marcello Malpighi discovered the glomerulus that bears his name in the 17th century, but it was not until the middle of the 19th century, in 1842, that William Bowman in London published his studies of the histological structure of the glomerulus and proposed that urine formation begins with glomerular secretion. At nearly the same time in Marburg, Carl Ludwig, unaware of Bowman’s findings, proposed that urine formation begins with glomerular filtration followed by tubule reabsorption. The controversy lasted 80 yr.

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 28, 2016