Wolff's Law

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Julius Wolff was a 19th century surgeon who famously described the relationship between bone shape/form and function/mechanics. His observations are summarized in what is known as Wolff's law: bone shape/form is a result of mechanical forces, and normal bone can change in response to different stresses. For example, the bones of the dominant arm of a tennis play will be different than bones of the non-dominant arm. Specimens (left) and drawings (right) are from Wolff's publication On the Inner Architecture of Bones and its Importance for Bone Growth (or for the German, Ueber die innere Architectur der Knochen und ihre Bedeutung fu ̈ r die Frage vom Knochenwachsthum). The drawings were actually made by a contemporary mathematician (Culmann) who compared the lines of stress of the proximal femur to a crane.