Wilhelm Feldberg

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Wilhelm Siegmund Feldberg CBE FRS (19 November 1900-23 October 1993) was a German-British physiologist and biologist.

[edit] Biography

Feldberg was born in Hamburg to a wealthy middle class Jewish family. He studied medicine at Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin, graduating in 1925. In the same year he moved with his new wife to England and studied first under John Newport Langley at Cambridge and then Henry Dale at Hampstead. In 1927 he returned to the Physiological Institute in Berlin but he was dismissed in 1933 during the Nazi purge of Jewish scientists.

He returned to England where he was Reader in Physiology, Cambridge University, until 1949; Head of Physiology and Pharmacology Division, National Institute for Medical Research, London, 1949-65 (Honorary Head of Division, 1965-66); Head, Laboratory of Neuropharmacology, National Institute for Medical Research, 1966-74. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947 and made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963.

Feldberg's career was ended in 1990 when two animal rights activists gained access to his lab on the pretence of writing a biography and filming an educational video. Their claims were printed in The Independent. An investigation by the Medical Research Council found that some breaches of regulations had occurred. While these may not have been Feldberg's fault, he was deemed responsible and his Home Office Project Licence was revoked. One of the animal rights activists involved, Melody MacDonald, detailed her claims in a 1994 book Caught in the Act:The Feldberg Investigation (ISBN 1-897766-05-X).

[edit] References

Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society of London 1997 vol 43 pp 143-170, by G.W. Bisset and T.V.P. Bliss
Autobiobraphy - Fifty Years On: Looking back on some Developments in Neurohumoral Physiology, Feldberg, Wilhelm; Liverpool University Press, 1982, pl