Gustav Victor Rudolf Born

Gustav Victor Rudolf Born FRCP, HonFRCS, FRS (29 July 1921 – 16 April 2018)^[1] was a German-British professor of Pharmacology at King's College London and Research Professor at the William Harvey Research Institute, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Gustav Victor Rudolf Born
Born	29 July 1921 Germany
Died	April 16, 2018(2018-04-16) (aged 96)
Education	University of Edinburgh
Parent	Max Born (father)

He was born in Germany, the son of the scientist Max Born and his wife Hedwig Ehrenberg. His early education was at the Oberrealschule, Göttingen. He fled Germany with his family in 1933, as his father and maternal grandfather were Jewish. He then attended The Perse School and Edinburgh Academy. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

As a doctor serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was one of the first to witness the after-effects of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. He was struck by the incidence of severe bleeding disorders among the survivors which was due to a lack of platelets due to radiation damage. This drove much of his later research. He developed a simple device to measure the platelet aggregation rate which revolutionised the diagnosis of platelet related blood diseases and led to the development of antiplatelet medicines that have reduced the risk of heart attack and stroke for millions of people worldwide. He did not patent the device, saying that scientific advances with medical implications should not be exploited for commercial gain.^[2]

Career

From 1973 to 1978 he was Sheild Professor of Pharmacology at Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London^[3] in 1972, and of the Royal College of Physicians in 1976. He was Professor of Pharmacology at King's College London, 1978–86, and became Research Professor at the William Harvey Institute in 1989.

Family

Born married Ann Plowden-Wardlaw, a medical doctor and Kleinian psychoanalyst, with whom he had three children.^[4]: 289 In 1962, he married Dr Faith Maurice-Williams,^[5] with whom he had two more children, one of which being Carey Born, an actress and filmmaker, known for her production company FirstBornFilms. His father's (Max Born) family was of Jewish descent. His other daughter is Georgina Born, Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at the University of Cambridge, and his niece was the singer and actress Olivia Newton-John.^{[citation needed]}

Publications

In 2006, he co-authored a book with Lorie Karnath "Wohin geht die Sonne, wenn ich schlafe" Nymphenburger Verlag, Munich.^[6]

See also

• Gustav V. R. Born (2002). The Born Family in Göttingen and Beyond. Termessos Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938016-05-3. Retrieved 12 February 2008.
• Born, Gustav V.R.; Karnath, Lorie (2018). "Editorial — The Knowledge Gap". Molecular Frontiers Journal. World Scientific Pub Co Pte Lt. 02 (1): 1–3. doi:10.1142/s2529732518010010. ISSN 2529-7325. S2CID 189045022.

References

1. "Max-Born-Berufskolleg – Technisches Berufskolleg in Recklinghausen". Max-Born-Berufskolleg.
2. "Gustav Born Biography". The Royal Society. The Royal Society. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
3. Flower, Rod (2020). "Gustav Victor Rudolph Born. 29 July 1921—16 April 2018". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 68: 23–47. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2019.0026.
4. Greenspan, Nancy (2005). The End of the Certain World (1st ed.). Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 0-470-85663-7.
5. Flower, Rod (26 April 2018). "Obituary Gustav Born". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
6. Born, Gustav (2006). Wohin geht die Sonne, wenn ich schlafe? Antworten auf die Rätsel des Lebens für Amalie (in German). München: Nymphenburger. ISBN 978-3-485-01075-7. OCLC 162285349.

External links

• Freeview Video 'Face to Face with Gustav Born' by the Vega Science Trust
• Gustav V R Born in Spiked Online
• Gustav Victor Rudolf Born on the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group website
• Professor Gustav Born obituary, written by Tom Whipple