Peter Emil Becker

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Peter Emil Becker (born November 23, 1908 in Hamburg ; † October 7, 2000 in Göttingen ) was a German neurologist , psychiatrist and human geneticist . The muscular dystrophy Becker-Kiener is named after him, which he discovered in the post-war years and about which he published in 1957.

Life

Becker was born in Hamburg on November 23, 1908. He studied medicine in Marburg, Berlin, Munich, Vienna and Hamburg and received his license in 1933. After completing his specialist training in neurology and psychiatry, he was Fritz Lenz's assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and Eugenics in Berlin from 1936 to 1938 . He then worked in the genetic biology department of the University Neurological Clinic in Freiburg im Breisgau in the field of muscular dystrophy .

Becker married Rosette Wendel in 1937, and the marriage had 6 children.

Becker was a member of the SA , in which he became Oberscharführer in 1934. In 1940 he joined the NSDAP . In 1942 he was drafted as an air force doctor. From 1943 until the end of the war in 1945 he was again an employee and lecturer at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Freiburg im Breisgau; until 1956 he practiced as a resident neurologist in Tuttlingen and also taught at the University of Freiburg . In 1951 he was appointed adjunct professor there.

In 1957 he accepted the position of professor for the extraordinary chair for human heredity at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen , which was upgraded to an institute in 1962. Becker headed this institute for human genetics until his retirement in 1975. Here he worked as the successor to Fritz Lenz , with whom he already worked at the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and Eugenics. In 1970 and 1971 he was chairman of the Society for Anthropology and Human Genetics .

meaning

Becker was co-founder and co-editor of the journal Human Genetics (1964, renamed Human Genetics in 1976 ), which is a continuation of the journal for human heredity and constitutional theory published by Günther Just (who coined the term "human genetics") and Karl Heinrich Bauer involved in setting up the German Society for Human Genetics . In 1988 he received an honorary doctorate from Ulm University .

The Peter Emil Becker Prize, which has been awarded annually in Göttingen since 1998 for outstanding achievements in the field of pediatric neurology, was named after him until 2015. The 2015 award winner, Linda de Vries, whose close relatives were Holocaust victims, did not want to accept the award under this name due to Becker's complicity in the crimes of the Nazi era, whereupon the Society for Neuropediatrics (gnp) decided to award it to "Ehrenpreis der Deutschensprachigen Gesellschaft für Neuropädiatrie "(Honorary award of the Germanspeaking Society of Pediatric Neurology").

Publications (selection)

  • New results in the genetics of muscular dystrophies. In: Acta genetica et statistica medica. 7, (Basel) 1957, p. 303.
  • as editor: human genetics. A short manual in 5 volumes. Thieme, Stuttgart 1964–1972.
  • On the history of racial hygiene. Paths to the Third Reich. Thieme, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-13-716901-1 .
  • Social Darwinism, Racism, Anti-Semitism and Völkischer Thought (= ways into the Third Reich. Volume 2). Thieme, Stuttgart / New York 1990, ISBN 3-13-736901-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 35.
  2. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945 (=  Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (also: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), p. 176.
personal data
SURNAME Becker, Peter Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurologist, psychiatrist and human geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 2000
Place of death Goettingen