Albert Wollenberger

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Albert Wollenberger (born  May 21, 1912 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; †  September 25, 2000 in Berlin ) was a German doctor , biochemist and pharmacologist . From 1965 to 1972 he headed the Institute for Cardiovascular Research of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and from 1972 was Director of its successor institution, the Central Institute for Cardiovascular Research in Berlin-Buch . Due to his research activities, he is considered a co-founder of molecular and cellular cardiology . Among other things, he developed a method for the cryofixing of tissue on the beating heart , which was known as the "Wollenberger clamp" and was widely used in cardiological research.

Life

Albert Wollenberger was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1912 and lived with his family from 1913 to 1919 in Geneva and then in Berlin . He graduated from high school in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1931 and then began studying medicine and biology at the University of Berlin . After the seizure of power of the Nazis in Germany, he emigrated in 1933 for political reasons on Switzerland , France and Denmark in 1937 in the United States . There he continued his studies from 1940 to 1945 at Harvard University , where he also received his doctorate in the group of Nobel Prize winner Fritz Albert Lipmann and in 1946 worked as a research assistant under Otto Krayer at the Pharmacological Institute. At the beginning of the 1950s, under the impression of the McCarthy era, he left the USA and returned to Europe. He initially worked as a visiting professor at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen , at the Institute for Biochemistry at Uppsala University , at the Psychiatric Institute at the University of London and at the Institute for Neurophysiology at the University of Copenhagen .

Because of his political convictions, he then settled in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1954 he received a chair for pharmacology at the Berlin Humboldt University and two years later he was co-founder of the department for biochemistry of the heart in Berlin-Buch , which he headed from 1962. From this, the Institute for Circulatory Research of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin emerged in 1965 , of which he was director from its foundation until 1972. In the same year, the institute and the institute for cortico-visceral pathology and therapy became the central institute for cardiovascular research , at which he was head of the "Molecular and Cellular Cardiology" department until his retirement in 1978. In 1968 he founded with other scientists, the professional society International Society of Heart Research (International Society for Heart Research), which he was President from 1973 to 1976, and a year later the journal Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology . He remained scientifically active until the end of the 1980s and died in Berlin in September 2000.

His son Knud Wollenberger , born in 1952 in Denmark , his wife's homeland, was married to Vera Lengsfeld from 1981 , who was one of the best-known representatives of the GDR opposition .

Scientific work

Albert Wollenberger's research activities focused on the regulation of cardiac function and the fundamentals of cardiac ischemia and cardiac hypertrophy . In the course of his career he published over 400 scientific papers and books. One of his best-known contributions is a method for the cryofixing of tissue on the beating heart, published in 1960, which is a routine method in cardiological research that is widespread worldwide under the name "Wollenberger clamp" . This publication is one of the few works by scientists from the GDR that has been frequently cited internationally. In addition, in 1987 he and his working group described autoantibodies against β 1 -adrenoceptors in patients with dilative cardiomyopathy and in 1989 a blood test for the early detection of a heart attack .

Awards

Albert Wollenberger was a corresponding member of the GDR Academy of Sciences from 1972 and a full member from 1978, and in 1974 he was admitted to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 1964 he received the National Prize of the GDR , in 1972 the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and in 1982 in gold.

Works (selection)

  • Albert Wollenberger, Otto Ristau, Georg Schoffa: A simple technique for extremely fast cooling of larger pieces of tissue. In: Pflüger's archive. 270/1960. Pp. 399-412
  • Cyclic Nucleotides and Protein Phosphorylation in Cell Regulation. Oxford and New York 1979 (as co-editor)
  • The neural and hormonal regulation of the heart: biochemical mechanisms. Berlin 1982
  • Cellular and Molecular Aspects of the Regulation of the Heart. Berlin 1984 (as co-editor)

literature

  • Wollenberger, Albert . In: Werner Hartkopf:The Berlin Academy of Sciences. Its members and award winners 1700–1990. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1992,ISBN 3-05-002153-5, p. 399.
  • Ernst-Georg Krause, Wolfgang Schulze, Gerd Wallukat: In Memoriam Albert Wollenberger. In: Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. 33/2001. Elsevier, pp. 1/2, ISSN  0022-2828
  • Ernst-Georg Krause: Obituary for Prof. Dr. Albert Wollenberger. In: Journal of Cardiology . 89/2000. Steinkopff-Verlag, p. 1153/1154, ISSN  0300-5860

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eugene Garfield : This Week's Citation Classic . In: Current Contents . No. 31 , 1979, pp. 221 ( online [PDF; accessed October 18, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Wollenberger, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biochemist, pharmacologist and heart researcher
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 2000
Place of death Berlin