Werner Lipschitz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Werner Ludwig Lipschitz , also Lipschitz-Lindley (born March  28, 1892 in Berlin , †  February 1, 1948 in Pearl River, Orangetown, New York ), was a German pharmacologist and biochemist . He worked from 1926 to 1933 as a full professor of pharmacology and institute director at the University of Frankfurt . After emigrating to Turkey, he worked there from 1933 to 1938 as director of the Institute for Biochemistry at Istanbul University . In 1938 he went to the USA , where he worked as a pharmacologist in the pharmaceutical industry until shortly before his death .

Life

Werner Lipschitz was born in Berlin in 1892 and, after attending a reform high school in his hometown, studied medicine and chemistry at the universities of Freiburg , Göttingen and Berlin . In 1915, under Emil Fischer, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy at the Institute of Chemistry at Berlin University and a year later in medicine at the University of Leipzig . During the First World War he served as an army doctor in 1915/1916 and then in 1917/1918 in a military hospital near Berlin, which enabled him to continue his studies with Emil Fischer.

In 1918 he went as an assistant at the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Frankfurt , he participated in the two years later with a thesis on the mechanism of toxicity of aromatic nitro compounds for Pharmacology habilitated . After the death of Alexander Ellinger , he became deputy director of the institute in 1923, associate professor in 1925 and, one year later, as Ellinger's successor, full professor of pharmacology and director of the pharmacological institute. In 1932/1933 he served as chairman of the German Pharmacological Society.

After the " seizure of power " by the NSDAP , he was relieved of his office, was banned from working and, following an invitation from the Turkish government, emigrated to Turkey in 1933, where he was appointed director of the newly founded Institute for Biochemistry at Istanbul University for six years took over and built it up. His successor in Frankfurt was temporarily taken over by Walther Laubender in 1934/1935 and then by Fritz Külz, appointed by the University of Kiel . After his contract in Istanbul had expired in the spring of 1938, Werner Lipschitz went, like other scientists in exile in Turkey up to 1945, to the United States of America , where he initially received a guest post at the Department of Experimental Surgery at New York University . From the summer of 1940 to the end of December 1947 he worked as a pharmacologist and chemist for the Lederle Laboratories ( Lederle-Arzneimittelwerke ) in New York (more precisely Pearl River).

Werner Lipschitz was from 1921 to Dora Edinger (1894-1982), a daughter of the neurologist and brain researcher Ludwig Edinger and his wife, the Frankfurt social politician and women's rights activist Anna Edinger , married and father of two sons. In February 1948, at the time with the prospect of employment at Syracuse University , he died at the age of 55 in Pearl River, a small village , of complications from viral pneumonia (pneumonia) . The disease has been linked to infection acquired through experiments with a virus in 1946 and it has also been alleged that it was a suicide in disguise.

Scientific work

Werner Lipschitz published around 110 scientific publications . The focus of his research was the investigation of the sites and mechanisms of action of drugs , disinfectants and poisons such as nitro compounds with the aim of elucidating general pharmacological principles. He devoted himself to characterizing cell functions , including cell respiration and the analysis of water movements in the body, especially osmosis in red blood cells, as well as the halides of alkali and alkaline earth metals in various body fluids and excretion products . With the same aim he investigated the temperature dependence of pharmacological reactions.

One of his most important works published in Turkey is his Hayati ve Tıbbi Kimya Dersleri (“Biochemical Lessons”) , written with Saib Ragib Atamdeir and published in Istanbul in 1937 .

During his research into Lederle's drug effects , he discovered the prerequisites for mercury-free diuresis and was rewarded by the company.

literature

  • Walther Laubender : Werner Lipschitz. Obituary in: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology. 207 (3-4) / 1949. Springer, pp. 243-255.
  • Lipschitz, Werner Ludwig. In: Konrad Löffelholz, Ullrich Trendelenburg : Persecuted German-speaking pharmacologists 1933–1945. Dr. Schrör Verlag, Frechen 2008, ISBN 3-98-060048-3 , p. 75.
  • Udo Benzenhöfer : The University Medicine in Frankfurt am Main from 1914 to 2014. Kontur, Münster 2014, pp. 103-104.
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 736.
  • Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special consideration of his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). Medical dissertation, Würzburg 1985, pp. 50 and 68-70.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special reference to his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). Medical dissertation, Würzburg 1985, pp. 50 and 68-70.
  2. Sometimes 1946 is erroneously given as the year of death, for example in Horst Widmann, Exil und Bildungshilfe, and in Arslan Terzioglu, see links to Philipp Schwartz
  3. Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special reference to his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). 1985, p. 70.
  4. Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special reference to his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). 1985, pp. 68-70.