Hans Walter Kosterlitz
| Hans Kosterlitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | Hans Walter Kosterlitz 27 April 1903 Berlin |
| Died | 26 October 1996 (aged 93) |
| Citizenship | Germany, Great Britain |
| Nationality | British, German (before 1933) |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions | University of Aberdeen |
| Alma mater | Humboldt University of Berlin |
| Known for | Endorphins |
| Notable awards | Harvey Prize (1981) Fellow of the Royal Society (1978) Royal Medal (1979) |
| Spouse | Hannah Greßhöner |
Hans Walter Kosterlitz FRS (27 April 1903 – 26 October 1996) was a German Jewish British biologist. He is the father of Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Kosterlitz.
Kosterlitz earned a Doctor of Medicine (Dr. med) at Humboldt University of Berlin. He emigrated to Scotland in 1934, after the Nazi takeover in Germany led to antisemitic legislation that barred him from his job at Charité in Berlin. The affair shocked him and he fled to the UK, and after obtaining work in the UK, he was able to obtain safe-haven for his mother, brother, and fiancée Hannah. He joined the staff of University of Aberdeen in the same year, as an Assistant in the Physiology Department. Over the years he was a Carnegie Teaching Fellow, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and finally Reader. In 1968, Aberdeen established a new Department of Pharmacology, which was headed by Kosterlitz as professor until 1973, when he became director of the university's drug addiction research unit.
Kosterlitz is best known for his work as one of the key discoverers of endorphins. He performed a famous experiment that he envisioned in a dream while sleeping. He stimulated a strip of guinea pig intestine electrically and record its contractions with a polygraph. He then found that if you added opiates to the solution, the intestine would not contract. Opiates inhibit intestinal contraction. Those contractions were later found to resume in the presence of both opiates and an antagonist such as naloxone. Later, endogenous endorphins were discovered by applying pig brain cell homegenate to the apparatus. This caused the contractions to cease. The degree to which an opiate agonist inhibits contractions in the guinea pig ileum is highly correlated to its potency.
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