Ruggero Oddi (July 20, 1864 – March 22, 1913) was an Italian
physiologist and
anatomist who was a native of
Perugia. He is most well known for the
Sphincter of Oddi, which was named after him.[1]
Biography
He studied medicine at Perugia,
University of Bologna[2] and
Florence, and in 1894 was appointed head of the Physiology Institute at the
University of Genoa. In 1900 he was relieved of his position at Genoa because of
narcotics usage and fiscal improprieties. Later, he sought employment as a doctor with the
Belgian colonial medical service, and spent some time working in the
Belgian Congo. Oddi died on March 22, 1913, in
Tunis,
Tunisia.
While still a student, in 1887,[1] 23-year-old Oddi described a small group of circular and longitudinal muscle fibers that wrapped around the end of the
bile and
pancreatic ducts in 1887. This structure was later to be known as the
eponymous "
sphincter of Oddi". Oddi was not the original discoverer of the
sphincter; English physician
Francis Glisson initially identified it two centuries earlier, however it was Oddi who was first able to characterize its physiological properties.[2]