| Administrative History | Edith Bülbring (1903 – 1990), pharmacologist and physiologist. Bülbring entered Bonn University in 1923 and her clinical training was undertaken in Munich, Freiburg and Bonn. She qualified in May 1928. During the rise of Adolf Hitler and national socialism and 'when citizens were required by law to declare their ancestry, the fact that she was half Jewish caused her dismissal from the infectious disease unit of the Virchow Krankenhaus, Berlin [where she had been working]. She returned home to Bonn in late 1933'.
'Intending to go to Holland to practise medicine ... Bülbring first joined a sister and a friend on a holiday in England. While there, she visited her old chief at the Virchow Krankenhaus, Ulrich Friedemann, from Berlin, a refugee working in Sir Henry Dale's laboratory in Hampstead. Dale assumed she also was looking for a job, and contacted J. H. Burn, who was setting up a biological standardization laboratory for the Pharmaceutical Society in Bloomsbury Square, London; he offered her a post. Thus began her scientific career. When Burn was appointed to the Oxford chair of pharmacology in 1937, she moved to Oxford, where she became successively a departmental demonstrator (1937), university demonstrator and lecturer (1946), ad hominem reader (1960), and finally, in 1967, ad hominem professor. She was elected to a professorial fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall in 1960. She had been naturalized in 1948. Initially Edith Bülbring worked in collaboration with Burn on the autonomic nervous system, and the effects of catecholamines and acetylcholine and their interactions. She acted as Burn's research assistant for some fifteen years, but in her early forties began more independent research. She decided to concentrate on trying to unravel the physiology of smooth muscle, a tissue that had previously always irritated her by its unpredictability. It was here that she made the greatest impact, and she will be remembered as one of the world's most influential scientists in this field. Under her influence, the study of smooth muscles became first respectable, and then increasingly important'.
Bülbring was 'elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1958, received honorary degrees from Groningen, Louvain, and Homburg (Saar), was awarded the Schmiedebert - Plakette of the Deutsche Pharmakologische Gesellschaft in 1974 and won the Wellcome gold medal in pharmacology in 1985'.
'Eventually atherosclerosis led to amputation of one leg below the knee when she was in her seventies. She did not allow this to handicap her, but she had progressive loss of circulation in her other leg, and could not tolerate the thought of a second amputation. Instead, she spent much of her last two years trying different treatments, culminating in her final operation, an attempt at a venous graft which she knew would be highly risky. The graft was probably a success, but there were multiple emboli which affected her heart and probably caused her minor strokes. She died three days later on 5 July 1990 in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford'.
Cited from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, where further details can be found. |
| Description | Three letters, one to Bülbring, dated 12 August 1952, replying to a letter [not present] from Bülbring, dated 25 July 1952. Letter provides a detailed description of the 'condenser' and its parts.
Second letter is dated 13 November 1958, from Bülbring, saying that she has returned to Dale the 'paper' she read and says that she has a few questions: 'One is that I can't find the Japanese paper. The reference is incorrect. Could you let me have the correct one?'.
Third letter is dated 20 November 1958, to Bülbring, saying that the paper had arrived the day before and that Kosterlitz had added in her suggestions regarding the paper. Letter says that the quotation of the Japanese paper is correct, except the abbreviation, which Kosterlitz has altered. |