Ralph Kohn

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Sir Ralph Kohn (born December 9, 1927 in Leipzig ; † November 11, 2016 in London ) was a British pharmacologist, entrepreneur, patron and singer ( baritone ) of German origin. He was a great patron of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach .

Career

Kohn was born in 1927 in a musical and Jewish - Orthodox family in Leipzig. His father was the successful textile merchant Max Kohn from Gallicia . In the course of the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 his family fled to Amsterdam , where they up to the German invasion lived 1940th She got to Liverpool by ship and survived the Shoah . He and his family settled in Salford near Manchester , where he attended Grammar School .

He then studied at the University of Manchester , where he earned a Bachelor's and Master of Science degree. He received a PhD in pharmacology and the Wild Prize. He then carried out research on a scholarship at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, where he worked with Nobel Prize winner Sir Ernst Chain . He was also a Post Doc with Alfred Gilman in the Department of Pharmacology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He then worked in the pharmacological industry and increased R & D of range Smith, Kline & French one. After several years he switched to Robapharm .

In 1969 he founded his own clinical evaluation company , the UK's first private medical services company. He was a Bynum Tudor Fellow at Kellogg College , Oxford and was named President of the Birmingham & Midland Institute in 2011 . In 1991 he was the founder of the Kohn Foundation , which is committed to promoting science, education and the arts.

After the fall of the Wall, he made close contacts in Leipzig and sponsored the Bach Archive and the Leipzig Bach Festival and later the Forum Thomanum . He was a member of the board of trustees of the Bach Archive Foundation (2002) and the Canons of St. Thomae Foundation (2004). Kohn created the Ernst Chain Prize at Imperial College London and founded the Wigmore Hall Song Competition in 1997 . The Foundation finances the Royal Society Kohn Award (since 2005) and the Bach Prize (2006). It also supports the Bach Cantata Series at the Royal Academy of Music in London, which was founded in 2009, and is involved in the scholarship program there.

He was already instructed in the violin in Amsterdam and later trained as a singer in Rome, New York and London. He appeared on the radio and recorded several CDs (including with Graham Johnson ) with works by Bach, Mozart and Wagner. He earned a Doctor of Music from the University of London . He was Trustee of the Wigmore Hall and Honorary Trustee of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra.

Kohn was married to a Dutch Bergen-Belsen survivor and had three children.

Awards / memberships

literature

  • William D. Rubinstein / Michael A. Jolles / Hilary L. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011, p. 529.

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Obituary by Peter Wolly. In: Bach Magazin , 29 (2017), p. 34f.
  2. ↑ Friend of Bach Music - and his hometown, in: Leipziger Volkszeitung from November 14, 2016, p. 16.
  3. ↑ Awarding of the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon to Sir Ralph Kohn , www.leipzig.de, January 24, 2014, accessed on November 15, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Kohn, Ralph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British pharmacologist, entrepreneur, patron and singer (baritone) of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 2016
Place of death London