{"id":36374,"date":"2023-05-22T12:18:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T10:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.micropticsl.com\/great-names-in-spermatology\/"},"modified":"2023-05-22T12:18:47","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T10:18:47","slug":"great-names-in-spermatology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micropticsl.com\/es\/great-names-in-spermatology\/","title":{"rendered":"Great names in spermatology"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Great names that shaped the future of spermatology<\/h2>\n

\"\"The author has written several blogs during the last few years dealing with aspects such as the history of spermatology<\/a> and tracking sperm over the last fifty years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This blog is not a repetition of these aspects but focuses on some key role players who should be remembered for the crucial role they played in shaping the future of spermatology. I write this blog particularly with the younger spermatologists in mind. Understanding current and future developments are deeply rooted in the past history and far too little attention is devoted to its importance.<\/p>\n

Where do we start? It is not the intention to begin with van Leeuwenhoek in the 1600s but rather to focus on the last hundred years. Furthermore, I do not intend to present a comprehensive list, so unfortunately many important names may accordingly not be included.<\/p>\n

Foremost in the early 1900s is Prof Gustav Retzius who studied sperm structure of more than 400 species with a detail that is hardly comprehensible.\u00a0 Scholars from Cambridge, particularly those associated with the ARC Reproduction Group in Huntingdon Rd deserve special attention. Sir Alan Parkes, known for his research as a reproductive endocrinologist, had a huge influence in supervising many scholars associated with this group. He worked, among others, with Dr Chris Polge and they were the first spermatologists to freeze chicken and bull sperm successfully (1947). Incidentally, their first break through was a huge accident due to the fact that the medium that worked (glycerol) was wrongly labelled. A previous director, Prof Thaddeus Mann (late 1940s and 1950s), was a genius and together with his wife produced a comprehensive book on the biochemistry of semen which is still today a very important reference work. In those early days they indicated fructose to be the predominant sugar in semen and not glucose. Dr Robin Harrison was one of the first investigators to use biochemical and molecular biology approaches to study sperm function and supervised many young investigators. The author was privileged to have worked with Dr Hector Dott, the father of Computer Assisted Semen Analysis<\/strong> (CASA), in the late 1970s in Cambridge and the interactions and lessons learned from Hector Dott, Thaddeus Mann and Chris Polge certainly rubbed off and played a large influence in the development of spermatology and CASA in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\t\t