Among the many Americans who studied with Carl Ludwig in Leipzig was Henry Pickering Bowditch, who imported the German research style to Harvard University. Budwig was friendly and receptive to the inexperienced young Americans, for whom he fashioned research problems that would bring out their specific talents. In an 1870 letter to a Boston medical journal Bowditch described his experiences in Leipzig:

Prof. Ludwig directs personally all the work done in the laboratory, devoting his whole time to the superintendence of his pupils and making no independent investigations. Each of the pupils, at present nine in number; makes, under the direction of the Professor, a series or experiments with a view of settling some special point in physiology. The results arrived at are published at the end of the year, sometimes under the name of the Professor and pupil together, and sometimes under...