Franz Ignaz (Franz) Pruner (1808–82)

German physician, ophthalmologist, and anthropologist. PhD and MD, Munich, 1830. Professor of anatomy and physiology, Abuzabel (near Cairo), 1831. Director of the military hospital in Ezbekieh, Cairo, 1833. Director of the central hospital and professor of ophthalmology, Cairo, 1836. Private physician to Abbas Pasha, and given the courtesy title ‘Bey’, 1839–60. Moved to Paris for health reasons and carried out ethnographic and anthropological research, 1860–70. Forced to leave France after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war; became a private scholar in Pisa, 1870. His research focused on epidemic diseases and craniometry.