Hans Walter Kosterlitz

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Hans Walter Kosterlitz (born April 27, 1903 in Berlin ; † October 26, 1996 in Aberdeen ) was a German-British pharmacologist and physician. He is best known for his discovery of the opioid peptides , especially the enkephalins .

Life

Kosterlitz was born in 1903 in an upper-class assimilated Jewish family in Berlin. His father practiced as a doctor, his younger brother Hermann later became a well-known director in Hollywood under the stage name Henry Koster . After graduating from high school in 1921, Hans Kosterlitz studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg and from 1925 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin (today's Humboldt University ). There he received his doctorate in medicine in 1929. From 1928 to 1933 he worked as a research assistant at the 1st Medical Clinic.

His first scientific interests were research into carbohydrate metabolism and diabetes mellitus . In an animal experiment, he confirmed Oskar Minkowski's observation that fructose can be converted into glycogen independently of insulin . He was also able to show that diabetics can metabolize galactose by converting it into glucose in the liver.

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1934, he emigrated to Aberdeen in Scotland, where he was first in John James Richard Macleod of, the (co-) discoverer insulin worked, which at the local university at Marischal College who was a professor of physiology. After MacLeod's death, Kosterlitz continued his work on galactose metabolism in Aberdeen .

In 1937 he married Hannah Greßhöner, a friend from Berlin times. The marriage produced a son, John Michael , a professor of physics at Brown University and a 2016 Nobel Laureate in Physics.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Kosterlitz concentrated on nutritional physiology, which he saw as a contribution to the Allied war efforts against Germany. In the post-war period, his interests increasingly turned to the effects of opiates on the human organism. Earlier work by Paul Trendelenburg , among others , had shown the effect of morphine on muscle contractions. Kosterlitz concluded from this that there must be “endogenous” receptors for morphine in the human body and thus also endogenous morphine-like substances. At the instigation of his friend Alistair Macgregor, Kosterlitz was appointed first professor of pharmacology at the University of Aberdeen at the age of 65. Three years later he became director of the newly formed Institute of Pharmacology. After retiring at the age of 70, he continued his research as the director of the newly established NIH- funded Unit for Research on Addictive Drugs on endogenous opioids. Together with John Hughes , he isolated a substance from over two thousand pig brains, of which he reported in 1975 as "encephalin". This discovery of the enkephalins is seen as Kosterlitz's most important contribution to science.

With the discovery of enkephalins and endorphins , a door was opened to a whole new field of research, that of opioid peptides. The in-depth understanding of the physiology of pain perception and the effects of drugs made it possible, among other things, to develop new pain relievers.

Honors

Kosterlitz received numerous awards for his scientific work. In 1951 he became a member (Fellow) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , 1978 a member of the Royal Society , which awarded him the Wellcome Prize in 1982 , and in 1981 a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1976 he received the Schmiedeberg plaque from the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology , in 1978 the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research , and an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège .

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ AS Milton (1996) Obituary: Professor Hans Kosterlitz ; Obituary for Hans Kosterlitz in The Independent on November 4, 1996.
  2. ↑ Hans Kosterlitz: On the question of the characterization of active iron compounds by the benzide reaction . Dissertation . Berlin 1929.
  3. ↑ John Daintith (ed.): Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists . 3. Edition. Boca Raton, 2009, p. 459.
  4. ↑ Gabriele Froböse, Rolf Froböse: Lust and love - everything just chemistry? Weinheim 2004, p. 138.
personal data
SURNAME Kosterlitz, Hans Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1996
Place of death Aberdeen