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Jan Johannes Evangelista Purkinje, one of the most prominent Czech scientists of the 19th century, was born in Libochovice Castle on December 17, , in what was then Czech territory under the Austro-Hungarian empire. By the time Purkinje was attending primary school, he had already impressed his teachers with his brilliance, but it was his voice that astonished the local church.

The church later sent Purkinje from one Catholic Piarist school to another, studying tuition-free in return for singing in the monastery choir. He returned home to Libochovice where he supported himself by tutoring various wealthy families before returning once more to Prague to enter the faculty of medicine in At the conclusion of his medical studies, Purkinje had almost abandoned his hope of a career in academia as it was difficult at this time for native Czechs to attain a professorship.

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This work quickly gained popularity in the realm of physiology and his candidacy for the professorship of Physiology and Pathology at the University of Wroclaw was endorsed by renowned scientists and professors Wolfgang Goethe and Karl Asmund Rudolphi. At this point and in rapid succession, Purkinje began his seemingly impossible pursuit to advance all branches of life; in science, expression of his wisdom was found throughout his works in forensic science, pharmacology, histology, and physiology.

Purkinje commenced his investigative work in physiological optics, studying various subjective and objective visual phenomena. The history of his work bares resemblance to other well-known tales of near or incomplete discoveries that were later rediscovered by others, in which credit is often given primarily to the latter work. This work was the first to describe the principle of ophthalmoscopy.

For decades this work was overlooked or forgotten, until 27 years later when the classic description of the ophthalmoscope was published by Herman Vonn Helmholtz. In the nearly 3 decades between Purkinje and Helmholtz, several attempts were made to investigate the principles underlying ophthalmoscopy, unfortunately with little mention of Purkinje.