Friedrich August von Ammon of Dresden took a considerable part in shaping ophthalmology into a scientifically and clinically independent part of medicine, thus inserting himself into the great development of the specialty during the first half of the 19th century. In particular, he investigated the ontogeny of the human eye as well as its pathological anatomy. He edited journals, published monographs, created a school of his own and gained in this way far-reaching influence. As a practitioner, a teacher and a physician-in-ordinary to the King of Saxony, he maintained the tradition of an earlier ophthalmologist of Dresden: Georg Bartisch.