Robert Wartenberg


Robert Wartenberg was an American neurologist and professor.

History

Wartenberg was born in 1886 in Grodno, Belarus, then in the Russian Empire. He graduated from the University of Rostock, Germany in 1919. He worked with Max Nonne in Hamburg and Otfrid Foerster in Breslau. In 1933, he became head of the neurological clinic at Freiburg and Privatdozent in neurology. However, he was persecuted by the Nazis, and in 1935 he left Germany and settled in San Francisco. In 1952 he was appointed clinical professor of neurology at the University of California. Wartenberg was Jewish.

Career

Robert Wartenberg is known as the inventor of the Wartenberg neuronal wheel, a medical device through which it is possible to test the skin sensitivity of a subject, by systematically rotating the tool across the skin.
The cheiralgia paresthetica, a neuropathy of the hand caused by compression to the superficial branch of the radial nerve, was first identified by Robert Wartenberg in 1932.