Marcus-Matthias Gellrich, born in 1962, was one of the 1st prize winners of the German National Mathematics Competition at the end of his school-time in 1981. He studied medicine in Kiel (1982-1989) and Manchester, supported by the German National Scholarship Foundation, and earned his certification in ophthalmology at the University Eye Hospital in Freiburg. Since 1996 he has been a practising ophthalmologist in Kellinghusen in northern Germany.
Since 2006 Dr. Gellrich has been devoting intensive scientific effort to the slit lamp. It is his most fervent desire to encourage and witness the modernization of the slit lamp so that its potential can be fully exploited in today’s ophthalmology practices. To that end, he believes that a “sea change” must take place: From traditional biomicroscopy to a videographic approach that enables the slit lamp user to profit fully from recent technological breakthroughs such as video technology, digital image processing, and telemedicine.
This concept was presented in many lectures and films on national and international conferences (e.g. SOE and WOC) by Mr. Gellrich. It was also the main topic of his first book on the slit lamp, published in 2014.
The German Society of Ophthalmology (Deutsche Ophthalmologische Gesellschaft, DOG) awarded Dr. Gellrich the 1st video prize in 2007, 2015, 2017 and the Special video prize in 2011. He was also the first practising ophthalmologist to win the Hans Sautter Scientific Prize from the Association of the North German Ophthalmologists, which he received for a preliminary version of this comprehensive slit lamp atlas.