Viktor Hamburger

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Viktor Hamburger (born July 9, 1900 in Landeshut (Silesia); † June 12, 2001 in St. Louis ) was a German developmental biologist and pioneer in neuroembryology.

Live and act

Hamburger, son of a merchant family, studied zoology in Breslau, Heidelberg and Munich and went to the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg to study with Hans Spemann in 1920 , where he received his doctorate in 1925 with a thesis on the influence of the nervous system on the development of extremities in frogs. After years of assistance with Alfred Kühn in Göttingen and Otto Mangold in Berlin, he returned to Freiburg as a private lecturer. In 1932 he was able to go to the zoologist Frank Rattray Lillie at the University of Chicago thanks to a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation . In 1933 he was released in Freiburg because of his Jewish origins, which prevented him from returning to Germany. However, he succeeded in a scientific career in the USA: in 1935 he became assistant professor , in 1941 professor and chairman of the Department of Zoology at Washington University in St. Louis , where he remained until after his retirement in 1969.

Hamburger's best-known work, one of the most frequently cited publications in biology with over 4000 citations, is a detailed description of the developmental stages of the chicken embryo. These stages, known as the Hamburger-Hamilton stages , are still used today by developmental biologists. His work on the identification of the nerve growth factor was of great importance ; Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen received the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this work carried out in Hamburg's laboratory in the 1950s .

In 1953 Hamburg became a member of the National Academy of Sciences , in 1959 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He received honorary doctorates from Washington University, Uppsala University, and Rockefeller University. In 1983 he was honored with the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize , in 1989 the National Medal of Science and in 1985 he received the Ralph W. Gerard Prize .

The architect Rudolf Hamburger was his brother.

Fonts (selection)

  • V. Hamburger: Manual of Experimental Embryology . University of Chicago Press, 1942.
  • V. Hamburger: The Heritage of Experimental Embryology: Hans Spemann and the Organizer . Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-505110-6 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. V. Hamburger: On the influence of the nervous system on the development of the extremities by Rana fusca. In: Archiv f. Development mech. Dept. D d. Journal for Scientific Biology. Volume 105, pp. 149-201.
  2. ^ V. Hamburger, HL Hamilton: A series of normal stages in the development of the chick embryo. 1951. In: Developmental dynamics. Volume 195, Number 4, December 1992, pp. 231-272, ISSN  1058-8388 . doi: 10.1002 / aja.1001950404 . PMID 1304821 . (Reprint).
  3. Larry R. Squire (Ed.): The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography. Vol. 1. Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC 1996, p. 225.