1855 births

Grace Ross Cadell (October 25, 1855 – February 19, 1918) was a Scottish medical doctor and suffragist, and one of the first group of women to study medicine in Scotland and qualify.
She was, with Elsie Inglis, one of the initial entrants to the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, set up by Sophia Jex-Blake in 1886. She stood up to Jex-Blake over a disciplinary matter, being dismissed from the school and subsequently successfully sued Jex-Blake and her school. Her career as a physician and surgeon was devoted mainly to the care of women and children.
She became an active suffragette as was well known for public acts of defiance in the cause of women's suffrage. She was prominent in providing medical care and refuge for her fellow suffragettes, some of whom were released into her care directly from episodes of force feeding in prison. Her home became well known as a sanctuary for suffragettes.

Michele Esposito (29 September 1855 – 19 November 1929) was an Italian composer, conductor and pianist who spent most of his professional life in Dublin, Ireland.

Carl Joseph Schröter (19 December 1855 – 7 February 1939) was a Swiss botanist born in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany.
From 1874 he studied natural sciences at Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (ETH Zurich), where one of his early influences was geologist Albert Heim (1849–1937). Following his habilitation in 1878, he worked as an assistant to Carl Eduard Cramer (1831–1901). In 1883 he succeeded Oswald Heer (1809–1883) as professor of botany at ETH Zurich, a position he kept until 1926.Schröter was a pioneer in the fields of phytogeography and phytosociology. He introduced the concept of "autecology" to explain the relationship of an individual plant with its external environment, and "synecology" to express relationships between plant communities and external influences.In 1910 with Charles Flahault (1852–1935), he released Rapport sur la nomenclature phytogéographique (Reports on phytogeographical nomenclature), and with Friedrich Gottlieb Stebler (1852-1935), he was co-author of Die besten Futterpflanzen, etc. (1883–1884), a work involving forage crop cultivation and economics. It was later translated into English, and published with the title, "The best forage plants: fully described and figured with a complete account of their cultivation, economic value, impurities and adulterants, &c" (1889). With geographer Johann Jakob Früh, he was co-author of a book on Swiss moorlands, titled Die Moore der Schweiz : mit Berücksichtigung der gesamten Moorfrage (1904).

Georg Otto Ledderhose (15 December 1855 – 1 February 1925) was a German surgeon, professor and pioneering traumatologist.

Suze Robertson (17 December 1855 – 18 October 1922) was a Dutch painter. She belonged to a group of artists known as the Amsterdamse Joffers.

Dr. Abraham Bredius (18 April 1855 in Amsterdam – 13 March 1946 in Monaco) was a Dutch art collector, art historian, and museum curator.

Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (28 December 1855 – 3 November 1931) was an Uruguayan epic poet and political figure. He is referred to as the "National Poet of Uruguay".

Ludwig Edinger (13 April 1855 – 26 January 1918) was an influential German anatomist and neurologist and co-founder of the University of Frankfurt. In 1914 he was also appointed the first German professor of neurology.
Edinger was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Worms, where his father was a successful textile salesman and democratic congressman in the state parliament of Hesse-Darmstadt. His mother was the daughter of a physician from Karlsruhe. He was not ashamed that he started his career as a poor man. Indeed, he proposed free schooling for all children in 1873, but without success.
Edinger studied medicine from 1872 to 1877 in Heidelberg and Strasbourg. His studies into neurology began during his time as an assistant physician in Giessen (1877 - 1882). His habilitation was in 1881 about neurological researches. He became a docent for these themes. He worked in Berlin, Leipzig and Paris and opened his own practice for neurology in Frankfurt am Main in 1883.
Due to Edingers initiative in 1885, the pathologist Karl Weigert became director of the Dr. Senckenbergische Anatomie in Frankfurt. Weigert opposed antisemitism. Weigert gave his friend Edinger a place to work in his institute. In 1902, Edinger received enough space to start his own neurological department.
In 1909, after a dispute between Edinger and the Senckenberg foundation about the finances of the neurological institute, Edinger moved to the University of Frankfurt under the condition that he was responsible for the financing of the department. His problems had eased in 1886, when he married Anna Goldschmidt, the daughter of an old family of traditional Jewish bankers in Frankfurt; she received a large inheritance in 1906.
Edinger died suddenly on 26 January 1918 in Frankfurt of a heart attack. He had left instructions for his brain to be examined in his institute. The institute continued with the introduction of a foundation set-up by Edinger. The Neurology department of the Goethe University's Faculty of Medicine is named after him.
Edinger is credited with coining the terms "gnosis" and "praxis". These terms were later used in psychological descriptions of agnosia and apraxia. Also, he was the first to describe the ventral and dorsal spinocerebellar tracts and to distinguish the paleocerebellum from the neocerebellum.

Anatole Marie Émile Chauffard (22 August 1855 – 1 November 1932) was a French internist born in Avignon.
He earned his doctorate in 1882, and became médecin des hôpitaux. In 1907 he was appointed professor of internal medicine at the Paris faculty. He was a member of the Académie de Médecine, and in 1911 attained the clinical chair at Hôpital Saint-Antoine.
Chauffard is remembered for his work involving liver disease and his pathophysiological research of hereditary spherocytosis. His name is associated with the following disorders:

"Minkowski-Chauffard disease": Congenital hemolytic anemia with spherocytosis, splenomegaly and jaundice. Named with Oskar Minkowski (1858–1931).
"Troisier-Hanot-Chauffard syndrome": Hypertrophic cirrhosis with skin pigmentation and diabetes mellitus. Sometimes called primary hemochromatosis, bronze diabetes, pigmentary cirrhosis or iron overload disease. Named with Victor Charles Hanot (1844–1896) and Charles Emile Troisier (1844–1919).

Edouard de Jans (16 April 1855, in Sint-Andries – 11 July 1919, in Antwerp) was a Flemish portrait and genre painter.