Barend Joseph Stokvis
physician and professor of physiology (1834–1902)

Barend Joseph Stokvis (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbaːrəɲ ˈtɕoːsəf ˈstɔkfɪs]; 16 August 1834 – 29 September 1902) was a physician and professor of physiology and pharmacology at the University of Amsterdam. He is mainly remembered for his description of acute porphyria in 1889. As a researcher in chemical pathology he made contributions to the understanding of a number of diseases, such as diabetes. He was also considered an expert in tropical medicine and a celebrated medical educator. He authored an influential pharmacology textbook. Stokvis was one of a number of prominent 19th-century Jewish physicians in the Netherlands.
Early life and education
Stokvis was born to Rachel Wittering and Joseph Barend Stokvis, Jr., a Jewish physician and obstetrician in Amsterdam. He studied medicine in Amsterdam and at the University of Utrecht under Franciscus Donders and Jacobus Schroeder van der Kolk, obtaining a doctorate on a dissertation on hepatic glucose production in diabetes in 1856. His thesis appeared shortly after the publication of related work by the French physiologist Claude Bernard. Stokvis may also have been influenced by the chemist Gerardus Mulder in Amsterdam.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2373104. VIAF identifies the subject as 54137958. The Library of Congress control number is n00120270. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1834, 1902, 1889 and 1856.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barend Joseph Stokvis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.