Wernicke's area [SEP] discoverer or inventor
named after Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist and psychiatrist who, in 1874, hypothesized a link between the left posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus and the reflexive mimicking of words and their syllables that associated the sensory and motor images of spoken words. He did this on the basis of the location of brain injuries that caused aphasia. Receptive aphasia in which such abilities are preserved is also known as Wernicke's aphasia. In this condition there is a major impairment of language comprehension, while speech retains a natural-sounding rhythm
, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule
- Philip Barker Webb (1793–1854), English botanist (abbr. in botany: Webb)
- Hugh Algernon Weddell (1819–1877), English botanist (abbr. in botany: Wedd.)
- Robert Weinberg (born 1942), American cancer biologist
- August Weismann (1834–1914), German biologist
- Friedrich Welwitsch (1806–1872), Austrian botanist
- Karl Wernicke (1848–1905), German physician and neuroanatomist, discovered Wernicke's area