| AdminHistory | Gustav Victor Rudolf Born was born on 29 July 1921 in Gottingen, Germany, the third child of Hedwig (Hedi) Ehrenberg and Max Born. His Father was made FRS in 1939 and awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954. Gustav went to school in Gottingen and had an unusual childhood meeting with great physicists associated with his father visiting their home and his mother was associated with literary activities, writing plays and poems and corresponding with writers and philosophers.
When the Nazi government came to power in January 1933, his family left Germany and his father accepted an invitation to work in Cambridge and then in Edinburgh. He attended the Perse School Cambridge from 1933-1936 and then Edinburgh Academy from 1936-1938. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1938 and graduated in 1943 aged 22 after only 4 ½ years and no vacations as the medical school was under pressure to increase production of doctors for the armed forces.
He had become a naturalised British subject in 1938 and so was liable for military service, as a medical officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), on active service in the Far East until September 1946. In December 1945 he was a pathologist with the British occupation force in Japan, stationed at the Army Base Hospital in Hiro on the inland sea, four miles from Hiroshima.
His patients included large numbers of Japanese civilian casualties of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945 and deaths caused from haemorrhages caused by radiation-induced thrombocytopenia first aroused his interest in blood platelets.
On demobilisation in the autumn of 1947, He wrote to Professor Sir Howard Walter Florey FRS at the Sir William Dunn School of pathology in Oxford who accepted him as a research student. In 1948 was awarded a Medical Research Council studentship for training in research methods, participating in the schools post-penicillin interest in anti-bacterial agents. He graduated D.Phil. Oxon with thesis entitled 'Bacteriolytic enzymes of moulds' in 1951 but was unable to publish his work as similar results were published by a Belgian group before his thesis was finished.
During his studies, he read widely to sustain his interest in medical science and became particularly interested in immunology to the limited extent that it was then understood. It occurred to him that diseases or infections might alter ones proteins in such a way that the immune system treats them as foreign and makes antibodies against them and spoke to his supervisor, who dismissed it and told him to get on with brewing moulds. He was too shy to speak to Professor Florey and so was deprived in about 1949 of a chance to develop an original idea which some time later turned out to be of great importance. At this time, he wanted to be finished with original research and become a clinical doctor but Professor Florey spoke to him and urged him not to lose confidence. He obtained for him a research position in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit in Carshalton, Surrey, working on the mechanisms of pulmonary oedema in rabbits.
In 1953 he was invited by Professor Geoffrey Dawes FRS to join his team at the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research at Oxford University working on the changes in foetal circulation at birth in sheep. He participated in important discoveries including the autonomic control of foetal circulation and the mechanism of the closure of the ductus arteriosus. During this period, he was departmental demonstrator at the Department of Pharmacology at Oxford University teaching in the innovative practical classes devised by Professor Edith Buelbring FRS and joining her in original work on the physiology and pharmacology of smooth muscle. He also worked with Professor Hugh Blaschko FRS on mechanisms of the cellular uptake, storage and release of biogenic amines in adrenal medulla and elsewhere and gave an annual lecture to medical students on metabolic effects of injury, now included in successive editions of General Pathology edited by H W Florey.
From 1960-1973 Gustav was Vandell Professor of Pharmacology at the Royal College of Surgeons in London (in succession to Sir William Paton FRS). From 1964-1973 he was also Honorary Director of the Thrombosis Research Group of the Medical Research Council. This was a golden period in his research career working with his senior lecturer (and closest scientific friend) John Vane, later Professor and Nobel Laureate in 1982 for discovering the mode of action of aspirin and prostacyclin. Work topics during this time included:
Continued elucidation of mechanisms of uptake, storage and release of amines in adrenal medullary cells (cateholamines) and in platelets (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT)
Pathophysiology of blood platelets: invention of optical aggregometry.
Mechanism of platelet aggregation in haemostasis and thrombosis
Discovery of aggregation cofactors.
Elucidation of the aggregation release reaction (discovered by means of optical aggregometry)
Mechanism of platelet aggregation in haemostasis and thrombosis
Discovery of aggregation cofactors
Elucidation of the aggregation release reaction (discovered by means of optical aggregometry by D C Macmillan and M F Oliver in 1965)
Discovery of the first aggregation inhibitors
Effects of drugs on platelet function
Control of platelet thrombosis in artificial organs
Determinants of bleeding time measurements
Elucidation of the effects of fish diet/polyunsaturated fatty acids on haemostasis
Aggregation abnormality in scurvy
From 1973-1978, Gustav was the Sheild Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. Work topics during this time were:
Continuing elucidation of platelet aggregation ex vivo and in vivo
Inhibition of platelet activation in the circulating blood by drug effects on red cells
Quantitative investigation of the phenomenon of granulocyte rolling in blood vessels
Inhibition of lymphocyte recirculation
From 1978-1986, he was Professor of Pharmacology at Kings College London. His work topics during this time were:
Determination of platelet activation time
Quantitation of determinants of haemostasis
Effects of psychoactive drugs on platelet 5-HT mechanisms
Elucidation of the interactions of platelets and of granulocytes with vascular endothelium
He also published on paper on inhibition of the uptake of purines and nucelotides by African trypanosomes, which nitiated extensive and continuing work on a novel approach to the discovery of drugs active against sleeping sickness
He retired as Emeritus Professor of London University in 1986, and from 1988 took up a role (first Director, then later Research Professor) at the William Harvey Research Institute at St Bartholomew's Hospital School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London. His work at this time focused on:
Atherosclerosis research (based on the presumption that elucidation and prevention of atherogenesis and plaque fissure will diminish the clinical relevance of platelets in coronary and cerebral thrombosis)
Determinants of the atherogenic uptake of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and fibrinogen by arterial walls
Demonstration of increased LDL uptake by a catecholamine (noradrenaline)
Elucidation of plaque rupture
Putative explanation of anomalous aspirin and warfarin effects on heart attack survival
Endothelial surface charge effects in the microcirculation
He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1972 and was awarded the Royal Medal in 1987 in recognition of his major contributions to the physiology, pathology and pharmacology of platelets and of his widely used methods for studying platelet function in haemostasis and thrombosis.
His sister Margaret (1915-2000) married Maurice Pryce FRS. His sister Irene (1914-2004) married Brinley Newton-John and had three children including the singer Olivia Newton-John. He married in Edinburgh in 1950 to Ann Plowden-Wardlaw. They had three children, Max (born 1951), Sebastian (born 1953) and Georgina (born 1955). The marriage was dissolved in 1960. He married a second time in London in 1962 to Faith Maurice-Williams. They had two children, Carey (born 1965) and Matthew (born 1968). He also has ten grandchildren
His ancestry is documented and summarised in 'The Born Family in Goettingen and beyond' written by himself and published by the Institute for the History of Science at Goettingen University in 2002. There is voluminous documentation by and about Max and Heidi Born, including their articles, books and enormous handwritten correspondence. Most of this information is collected in the Born Family Archive deposited in the Archive of Churchill College, Cambridge.
Gustav Born died on 16 April 2018. |