Hans Laser

Hans Laser (born March 12, 1899 in Koenigsberg , † January 20, 1980 in Cambridge ) was a German-British medic.

Life and activity

Laser was the son of the doctor and medical adviser Hugo Laser and his wife Fanny, geb. Rittenberg. After attending the humanistic grammar school in Königsberg, where he graduated from high school at Easter 1917, he began studying medicine at the University of Königsberg . In September 1917 he was forcibly drafted for military service during the First World War.

After he left the army in April 1919 as a medical sergeant, Laser resumed his medical studies. In 1922 he passed the medical state examination. He graduated with an assisted by E. Meyer work on symptomatic psychosis to Dr. med.

From 1923 to 1926 Laser conducted clinical studies in Berlin. During this time he worked in 1925 on the first issue of the new specialist journal Archive for Experimental Cell Research .

From 1926 to 1930, Laser worked as an assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology . In this position he developed a new technology for the creation and maintenance of cell cultures in the tissue breeding department headed by Albert Fischer .

In 1930, Laser moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg at the invitation of Otto Meyerhof . In July 1930 he completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg with a thesis on radiobiological examinations of tissue cultures in the subject experimental pathology created especially for him.

In August 1933, following the rise of the National Socialists to power , Laser was revoked from the University of Heidelberg because of his - according to National Socialist definition - Jewish descent. In the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, on the other hand, he was initially classified in the group of exceptional cases in which Jews were allowed to continue to be employed in state institutions in the law passed by the National Socialists for the restoration of the civil service , as he was during the war from 1914 to 1914 1918 had belonged to the army and had worked in an epidemic hospital where he had been infected with typhus . The President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was of the opinion that the deployment in the epidemic hospital should be equated with direct frontline service - the laser had no longer experienced it - so that the relevant exception to the compulsory dismissal of Jews ordered by the professional civil servants law, the one Allowed Jewish World War II participants to remain on duty, would apply to Laser and accordingly, despite his Jewish descent, he could remain in his position with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. The Reich Ministry of the Interior initially found in a draft from August 1933 that there were no objections to Laer's continued employment. Eventually the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was asked to terminate Laser. The discharge finally took place on October 30, with effect from January 1, 1934.

Laser then went to Great Britain, where he found a research position at the Molteno Institute of Biology and Parasitology at Cambridge University with the help of the Academic Assistance Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. This enabled him to continue his research. Laser remained at Cambridge as a researcher until his death. In 1937 he acquired the Doctor of Philosophy there and in 1953 he was awarded the Doctor of Science in recognition of his scientific achievements.

In Germany, the National Socialist rulers classified Laser as an enemy of the state: He was expatriated on March 1, 1939 and the German Reichsanzeiger and Prussian State Gazette of June 10, 1939 announced that his doctorate was withdrawn. In the spring of 1940 he was placed on the special wanted list by the Reich Security Main Office , a directory of persons who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, were to move into the country from the occupying forces following special SS units, with special priority should be made and arrested.

Laser was a member of the British Medical Research Council since 1946 (since 1953 with the rank of permanent member of the scientific staff).

The focus of laser research was the metabolism of neoplastic cells in vitro and the radiobiology of cells in tissue cultures. In his later years he devoted himself to malaria research. He has published in journals such as naturre , Science , Radiation Research , Biochemical Journal and the Proceedings of the Royal Society .

family

Laser's mother and brother perished in National Socialist concentration camps.

Fonts

• Further advances in the growth of warm-blooded tissue cells in vitro , ....

literature

• Reinhard Rürup : Hans Laser. Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg . In: Ders .: Fates and Careers. Memorial book for researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists , Göttingen 2008, pp. 248–250.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Universitätsarchiv Leipzig: Subsequent withdrawals of academic degrees in the Deutsches Reichsanzeiger from 1937 to 1944 ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
2. ^ Entry on laser on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum) .