His grandfather was Father Pedro Casanas, native of Calamba and close friend of the Rizal family.

His name Jose was chosen by his mother who was a devotee of the Christian saint San Jose (St. Joseph). Jos now went to Paris to study ophthalmology. Dr. Louis de Wecker of Paris, "the leading authority among the oculists of France", found Rizal such a competent student and admired him so much, that he took him as his clinical assistant. This was exactly what Rizal most desired, for he was getting the best preparation in Europe to extract the cataracts from his mother's eyes. Dr. Carlos Czepelak- renowned scientist of Europe Professor Robert Klutschak- an eminent naturalist

The following year he went to Germany and attended lecture courses in the famous old University of Heidelberg. He lived with Pastor [Dr. Karl] Ullmer, a Lutheran minister, with whom he took delightful walks nearly every afternoon, learning much about German religious ideas. (10) The ancient city of Heidelberg is one of the scenic attractions of Europe, charmingly situated at the junction of the Neckar and the noble Rhine. Rizal has left us a tenderly beautiful poem which he wrote on that magic spot. Dr. Miguel Morayta He was the professor of history in Central University of Madrid. Proclaimed the "freedom of science and the teacher" and he was condemned and excommunicated by the Catholic Bishops of Spain. He transferred to the University of Leipzig to study psychology and history. Here he became a friend of Professor Friedrich Ratzel, one of the historians who helped change the methods of historical research. Ratzel, after the death of Rizal, wrote a long glowing tribute to the brilliant Filipino, for his scholarship and character. (12) "Rizal has accumulated the wisdom of three continents, and has acquired that vast scientific horizon which he needed in order to know the true condition of his country and to plan for her intellectual development."

Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker (May 3, 1828 February 7, 1890) was a Germanophthalmologist born near Ratzeburg. In 1859 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied under Carl Ferdinand von Arlt (1812-1887). Beginning in 1867 he was a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg. Becker was a pioneer in ophthalmic pathology, and the author of numerous writings on theeye. His many publications include treatises on the vessels of the macula lutea, congenital total color blindness, strictures of the lacrimal canaliculi and manifestations involving the movement of blood in the retina. He also completed Arlt's autobiography, Meine Erlebnisse, after his former teachers' death, and in 1866 published a German edition of Franciscus Cornelis Donders' work "On the Anomalies

of Accommodation and Refraction of the Eye" (London, 1864) as Die Anomalien der Accommodation und Refraktion des Auges. In addition he published a large number of anatomist Heinrich Mller's medical papers in a collection titled Heinrich Mller's gesammelte und hinterlassene Schriften zur Anatomie und Physiologie des Auges (Heinrich Mller's collected and bequeathed writings on [1] the anatomyand physiology of the eye). Dr. Jos Rizal (1861-1896), martyr and national hero of the Philippines, completed his ophtalmological studies under Professor Becker at the University Eye Clinic Heidelberg in 1886. In 1887 Becker established the "Graefe Museum" at the University of Heidelberg in honor of oculist Albrecht von Graefe (1828-1870). He is credited with introducing the concept cataracta complicata to describe lenticular changes that often appear in various ocular diseases, and are generally [2] characterized by punctate, striate or diffuse opacities. 14 October 1886 He got acquainted persolly with Doctor Hans Meyer, chief of the Bibliographical Institute of the Germany, and author of one of the two famous encyclopaedical dictionaries of Germany.