Alfred Glucksmann

Alfred Glucksmann , originally Alfred Glücksmann (born December 28, 1904 in Rybnik , Upper Silesia , † July 14, 1985 ) was a German-British doctor (embryologist).

Life and activity

Alfred Glücksmann grew up in Silesia. After attending school in Breslau , he studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg . At this time he made friends with Norbert Elias , who later became known as a philosopher , whom he already knew from the Jewish youth movement in Breslau and whom he later helped with emigrating to Great Britain.

After graduating, he became an assistant at the Anatomical Institute of Heidelberg University in 1929.

After the National Socialists came to power , Glücksmann, who was considered a Jew by the standards of the new regime - and was dismissed from university service in accordance with the National Socialists' view of the need to oust Jews from public life - went to Great Britain, where he received a scholarship of the Academic Assistance Council got a job at the Strangeways Laboratory at Cambridge University. Since 1935, his research was funded by the British Empire Cancer Campaign for Research (later Cancer Research Campaign), which entertained him for the rest of his scientific career. From 1933 to 1940 Glücksmann worked as a Research Associate at the Strangeway Laboratory, then from 1940 to 1960 as Senior Histologist.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Glücksman was interned by the British authorities as a member of a hostile power: his internment, which lasted until around 1944/1945, he spent first in a camp on the Isle of Man and then in Canada. At the end of the war he was able to return to his position at the Strangeways Laboratory. Around this time he changed his name from Glücksmann to the Anglo-Saxon sounding Glucksmann.

In 1960 Glucksmann was appointed by the trustees of the Strangeways Laboratory as the successor to FH Spear as Deputy Director. Until his retirement in 1972 and beyond, he conducted research at this institution (interrupted by occasional guest stays at other institutions such as the Institute of Animal Physiology in Babraham, Cambridge). From the 1940s to the 1960s, Glucksmann submitted numerous articles for specialist journals as well as some monographs on medical topics.

Glucksmann's main area of ​​research during the early years of his career was the study of tissue development problems, so he presented a study of morphological degeneration in embryonic life forms, variously described as classic, and carried out experiments on the influence of mechanical factors. Later, the quantitative histological analysis of human tumors before, during and after their radiological treatment became the focus of his research. In practice, he extracted samples from the growing ends of tumors at different growth stages, counting the number of dividing, differentiating and degenerative cells. His research on the effects of ionizing radiation on normal tissue and on tumor tissue was also considered important.

Honors

Glucksmann was the recipient of the British Institute for Radiology Röntgen Award, member of the International Society of Cell Biology, Fellow of the International Academy of Cytology, member of the Pathological Society of Great Britain.

In 1964, Glucksmann received the Senior Gibb Fellowship of the British Empire Cancer Campaign.

family

Glucksmann had been married to the biologist Ilse Lasnitzki since 1945, who is considered a pioneer in the field of research into the effects of tobacco smoke on the human lungs.

They had a daughter together, Miriam Glucksmann, who later became a professor of sociology at Essex University.

Fonts

• On the development of the anterior chamber of the eye, the vitreous humor and the cornea in humans, in some mammals and sauropsids , 1929. (Dissertation)
• "Development and Differentiation of the Tadpole Eye", in: British Journal of Ophthalmology, Vol. 24 (1940), pp. 153-178.
• "Cell Deaths in Normal Vertebrate Ontogeny", in: Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , Vol. 26 (1951), pp. 59-86.
• "Carincogensis", in Cellular Basis & Aetiology of Late Somatic Effects of Ionizing Radiation, 1963.
• "Micriinvasive Carinoma of te Cervis in Dysplasisa & Carcinoma in situ, 1964.
• "Comparative Biology of Dermal Healing after Thermal & Radiation Burns", in: Quarterly Journal of Surgical Sciences 1967
• "Effect of Castration Osterogen on the Thymus", Journal of Anatomy 1968.
• Sex Determination and Sexual Dimorphism in Mammals , 1978.
• Sexual Dimorphism in Human and Mammalian Biology and Pathology , 1981.

literature

• William D. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History , 2011, p. 327.
• Obituary in: The Times, August 3, 1985.
• Obituary in: British Journal of Radiology , Vol. 58, p. 1030, 1985.
• Who's Who of British Scientists , 1971, p. 331.