Walther Straub

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walther Straub (born May 8, 1874 in Augsburg , † October 22, 1944 in Bad Tölz ) was a German pharmacologist .

Life

Straub studied medicine in Munich, Tübingen and Strasbourg. During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . After graduating as Dr. med. in Munich he worked with Rudolf Boehm at the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Leipzig . He belonged to the Boehm School of Pharmacology. In 1900 he completed his habilitation in Leipzig, in 1904 he received a call as associate professor for pharmacology in Marburg , in 1906 he became a full professor at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg , and in 1907 he took over the newly founded Pharmacological Institute of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau . Here he stayed until 1923. In 1908 he turned down an offer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , in 1923 he accepted an offer at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich . In 1939 he suffered a stroke from which he did not recover. During the Second World War , on July 11, 1944, he experienced the destruction of his Munich institute. He died on October 22, 1944 after a second stroke.

He was married to Dagny Lie (1880-1945), the daughter of the mathematician Sophus Lie .

research

General

Straub's main area of ​​work was the pharmacology of cardiac glycosides . One year after moving to Munich in 1924, he summarized the knowledge of that time in the handbook of experimental pharmacology . In addition, he was versatile. This is shown by a few titles from his time in Freiburg: On chronic poisoning, especially chronic lead poisoning (1911); Lecture attempts on the theory of anesthesia (1912); Be careful with overseas drugs (1914); About digital culture (1917); On sleeping, smoking and drinking coffee (1920); The position of balneology on pharmacology (1922).

The mouse tail phenomenon

He made a particularly significant discovery at the beginning in Freiburg, namely the characteristic posture of mice after an injection of a small dose of morphine : the tail is maximally bent forward over the back, often in an S-shape. The reaction is specific for morphine and was used for forensic evidence . As 1940 Otto Schaumann for Hoechst AG examined a new substance considered antispasmodic should serve, he found with the help of Straub's mouse tail phenomenon that the substance is in fact a morphine-like analgesic , so one opioid was: the pethidine . It was the first of the practically very important series of synthetic opioids. In 1963 the second World Pharmacological Congress took place in Prague . The Czechoslovakia was a special stamp out. The mouse tail phenomenon served as the motif. Until 2002, MEDLINE registered 129 mentions in the titles and summaries of medical publications under the keyword “Straub tail”, sometimes with the lower case letter “straub tail”: Straub has entered the fund of biological knowledge in a depersonalized manner.

Research organization

The first Freiburg pharmacological institute building was built under Straub. Today it houses the Institute for Crystallography. The German Pharmacological Society was founded in Bad Nauheim in 1920 . Straub played the most active part. For 24 years, from 1921 to 1944, as the successor to Oswald Schmiedeberg, he was the editor of Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology , the oldest pharmacological journal still in existence.

Honors

Straub filled out the relevant questionnaire column by hand: “All kinds of foreign academies and scientific societies”. In any case, since 1925 he had been a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and an honorary member of the British Pharmacological Society . In 1928 he was accepted as a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1985 the Pharmacological Institute of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich was named after him the Walther Straub Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 185.
  2. ^ Otto Krayer: Rudolf Boehm and his school of pharmacology. Published by Melchior Reiter. Munich, W. Zuckschwerdt-Verlag, 1998. ISBN 3-88603-635-9
  3. ↑ Klaus Starke: The History of the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Freiburg (pdf; 1.6 MB)
  4. ^ Karl Strubecker: Lie, Sophus. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie Volume 14, pp. 470–472. (Digitized version) Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  5. ^ W. Straub: The Digitalis Group. In: Handbook of experimental pharmacology Volume 2, 2nd half. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1924
  6. ↑ W. Straub: A sensitive biological response to morphine . German Medical Weekly 1911; 37: 1462.
  7. ↑ O. Schaumann: About a new class of compounds with spasmolytic and central analgesic activity with special consideration of the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-piperidine-4-carboxylic acid ethyl ester (Dolantin). In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 1940; 196: 109-136.
  8. ↑ Klaus Starke: One Hundred Years of Pharmacology in Freiburg im Breisgau (pdf)
  9. ^ AW Forst: Walther Straub 100 years. In: Munich Medical Weekly 1974; 116: 1171-1174
  10. ↑ Member entry of Walther Straub at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on May 3, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Straub, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1944
Place of death Bad Tölz