| Arrangement | This collection has been arranged as follows:
1. Personal material, including financial and legal matters and satirical papers
2. Research papers, including his lectures and talks, publications and drafts, research notes and laboratory books, and some research on Henry Dale
3. Correspondence, arranged by name, topic, or organisation
4. Photographs, both in albums and loose
5. Posthumous material
This arrangement reflects the original order which the collections arrived in and mirrors the arrangement of the 4 others personal papers collections received by the Royal Society at the same time from the same source. |
| AdminHistory | Wilhelm Feldberg was born on 19th November 1900 in Hamburg, Germany. He studied medicine at Heidelberg University, Germany, graduating in 1925 and later went on to read Physiology at Cambridge.
Upon graduating from Heidelberg University, Feldberg was invited to England to work, first with Professor John Langley and Sir Joseph Barcroft in Cambridge, and then with Sir Henry Dale at the National Institute for Medical Research. This is where Feldberg ultimately spent the majority of his career.
In 1933 Feldberg was summarily dismissed from his position at the Physiological Institute in Berlin during the Nazi purge of Jewish scientists and was quickly invited to come and work at the National Institute for Medical Research with Henry Dale. After taking a readership to study Physiology at Cambridge, Feldberg was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947. In 1949 Feldberg became Head of the Division of Physiology and Pharmacology at the National Institute for Medical Research. From 1966 to 1974 he was Head of the Laboratory of Neuropharmacology at the National Institute of Medical Research. Feldberg continued his research career at the National Institute for Medical Research supported by grants from the Medical Research Council. In 1990 animal rights activists gained access to his laboratory and submitted a report to the Home Office alleging that animals being tested on were inadequately anesthetized and left unattended for periods of time. This led to Feldberg's license being revoked and brought his career to an end.
The NIMR was formed in 1913 and moved to Mill Hill Laboratory in 1950. Wilhelm Feldburg worked at the NIMR from 1934 until 1990.
In terms of research Feldberg spent much of his career concerned with the natural chemical substances which send messages from one part of the body to another. His research included: his early work on the pharmacology of histamine and acetylcholine; his work with Henry Dale on the chemical nature of synaptic transmission in the peripheral nervous system; and, in later years, his focus on the central nervous system where he introduced a new and widely adopted experimental approach to elucidate the site and mode of action of drugs in the brain. |