Detlev Wulf Bronk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Detlev Wulf Bronk

Detlev Wulf Bronk (born August 13, 1897 in New York City , † November 17, 1975 ibid) was an American biophysicist and science manager. From 1949 to 1953 he was President of Johns Hopkins University and from 1953 to 1968 director of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research (from 1965 Rockefeller University ).

Bronk came from a long-established New York family. One of his ancestors ( Jonas Bronk ) gave the Bronx its name , the ancestors can be traced back to a blacksmith named Brunck from the Palatinate who immigrated to today's USA in 1710. He studied electrical engineering at Swarthmore College with a bachelor's degree and physics from the University of Michigan with a master's degree in 1922 and his doctorate in 1924. He had already turned to biophysics in his dissertation. He became professor at Swarthmore College and in 1929 professor of biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania , where he became director of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics and the Institute of Neurology. 1940/41 he was also professor of physiology at the Medical College of Cornell University . In 1948 he became (as the successor to Isaiah Bowman ) President of Johns Hopkins University and in 1953 of the Rockefeller Institute .

His main area of ​​research was regulation of the nervous system, for example regulating blood pressure. With MG Larrabee he found a dependence of transsynaptic arousal on previous activity, an experimental indication of memory phenomena in the synapse system. Bronk also studied the chemical excitation of synapses, the heat generation of nerves and their oxygen consumption. In the 1920s he worked on it with Edgar Adrian , with whom he was in Cambridge in 1928. Then he was with Archibald Vivian Hill in London.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and from 1950 to 1962, succeeding Alfred N. Richards as its president. Bronk received the National Medal of Science in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1964 . In 1934 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society . He had been a foreign member of the Royal Society since 1948 . In 1961 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal . In 1952 he was President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and gave the Croonian Lecture . Bronk was also the founder and president of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1953 he was a member of the Académie des Sciences . The Mount Bronk in Antarctica is named after him, as is the lunar crater Bronk .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member History: Detlev W. Bronk. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  2. ^ Entry on Bronk, Detlev Wulf (1897-1975) in the archive of the Royal Society , London
  3. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter B. Académie des sciences, accessed on September 28, 2019 (French).
  4. ^ Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
personal data
SURNAME Bronk, Detlev Wulf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biophysicist and science manager
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 1975
Place of death New York City