Gustav Victor Rudolf Born

Life & Legacy

Gustav Victor Rudolf Born FRCP, HonFRCS, FRS (29 July 1921 – 16 April 2018) 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.
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. His essay entitled “Six cases illustrating lithiasis of the urinary tract, from the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh” was awarded the Pattison Prize in Clinical Surgery (University of Edinburgh, 1943).
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.