Hans Christian Hagedorn

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Hans Christian Hagedorn (born March  6, 1888 in Copenhagen , †  October 6, 1971 in Gentofte ) was a Danish pharmacologist and diabetes researcher. He co-developed the Hagedorn-Jensen method for measuring blood sugar and the first long-acting insulin preparation for the treatment of diabetes mellitus , known as Neutral Protamine Hagedorn or NPH insulin , and is considered one of the most outstanding Danish doctors in the first half of the 20th century .

Life

Hans Christian Hagedorn was 1888 in Copenhagen born and graduated from the local university to study medicine . He then went to a small hospital in Herning in western Denmark, where he also met his wife, who worked there as a dentist. After settling in the region as a general practitioner, he and the local pharmacist Birger Norman Jensen developed a simple method for determining blood glucose , which, after its publication in 1918, found widespread use for around four decades due to its reliability and simple implementation known as the Hagedorn-Jensen method .

Shortly after the Spanish flu , he moved to a hospital in Copenhagen, where he received his doctorate in 1921 on the regulation of blood sugar levels . While defending his doctoral thesis, he met August Krogh , who had received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1920 and whose wife had diabetes mellitus . During a lecture tour of Canada in 1922, Krogh learned of the results of the first clinical applications of the hormone insulin , which Frederick Banting and Charles Best had discovered shortly before, and received approval to manufacture insulin in Denmark. For this purpose, Hagedorn founded the Nordisk Insulin Laboratory and later developed the first long-acting insulin preparation from protamine and pig insulin , which is still one of the most frequently used insulins under the name Neutral Protamine Hagedorn or NPH insulin . In 1932, the Steno Memorial Hospital in Copenhagen was also established, which functioned as the research hospital of the Nordisk Insulin Laboratory and which Hagedorn was head physician for 26 years . When in the meantime there were bottlenecks in the availability of pancreases from slaughtered animals for the production of insulin, he investigated the suitability of the pancreata of whales weighing up to 50 kilograms . He succeeded in isolating whale insulin on board a whaling ship , but the process turned out to be too expensive for practical use.

During the Second World War he refused to cooperate with the German occupying power . A request by the German Red Cross that he requested , which he regarded as a prerequisite for the delivery of insulin to Germany , was never made. Hagedorn later developed diabetes himself and died in Gentofte in 1971 as a result of many years of Parkinson's disease .

Awards and recognition

Hans Christian Hagedorn received in 1938 from the University of Oslo and in 1954 from the University of Gothenburg , the honorary doctorate . He died shortly before the planned award of an honorary doctorate by the University of Toronto at a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of insulin . In 1946 he received the Banting Medal, their highest award from the American Diabetes Association . The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) made him an honorary member in 1965.

Named after him are the Hagedorn Research Center in Gentofte , a research promotion award sponsored by Novo Nordisk and awarded by the German Diabetes Society since 2002, as well as an endowed professorship at the Technical University of Dresden that has existed since 2009 and is also sponsored by Novo Nordisk .

literature

  • Torsten Deckert: Hans Christian Hagedorn (1888–1971). In: Ugeskrift for Læger. Issue 169/35 of August 27, 2007, p. 2883
  • Torsten Deckert: HC Hagedorn and Danish Insulin. Poul Kristensen, Herning 2000, ISBN 87-7851-131-3

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hagedorn, Hans Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish pharmacologist and diabetes researcher
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1971
Place of death Gentofte