Blaschko, Hermann Karl Felix

Section A contains laboratory notebooks ("protocol books") relating to his work on the localisation of adrenaline. Also records, formulas and research material mainly on dopamine, catcheolamines, meta-tyrosine, adrenaline and noradrenaline.

Section B contains correspondence with colleagues and friends and with scientific journals. Partly private conversation, but mainly on his work with adrenaline or amines or his colleagues' various work fields in biochemistry and autopharmacology. Illustrates a broad international exchange between Blaschko and his colleagues at universities in Europe, the United States and a few in Asia. Some correspondence relates to guest lectures, meetings and conferences.

Section C contains material from various conferences, congresses and symposia Blaschko attented. Many of them are physiological, pharmacological or biochemical congresses that took place all over Europe. It includes programs, invitations, lists of participants and scripts of talks held by Blaschko.

Section D contains biographical works, notes and articles on other scientists. It consists of other scientists' publications and journal entries, newspaper articles about them and texts and talks Blaschko himself wrote about their work and life. Many of them were teachers, colleagues and friends of Blaschko. Mixture of private memories on them and scientific analysis of their work, which often related to Blaschko's own studies on adrenaline or catecholamines.

Section E contains autobiographical works of Blaschko. It consists of his memories on his studies, time as a refugee scientist and his main research on adrenaline and catecholamines. It also contains different versions of his autobiography 'The autobiography of an autopharmacologist' and texts on his connection to the Oxford department of pharmacology.

Section F contains photographs and negatives from meetings, conferences and his colleagues from the 1920s to the 1980s.

Hermann Karl Felix Blaschko (also known as Hugh Blaschko) was born in 1900. He trained in medicine and took an MD, 1924, and then went into research on the bordeline field between physiology and biochemistry, which eventually led him into pharmacological research. In 1933 he was invited by A.V. Hill to University College London, where he had already worked with Hill in 1929-1930, and then went to Cambridge to work with Joseph Barcroft. In 1943 he moved to Oxford at the invitation of J.H. Burn, where he became reader in biochemical pharmacology. Many of his colleagues he worked with at Oxford later on became professor at several universities in Europe and America. He married Mary Black in 1944 and lived with her in Oxford for the rest of his life. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1962 and received the honorary doctorate of the Free University of Berlin in 1966. He died in 1993.

His main research was dedicated to adrenaline and catecholamines. He discovered the arenaline processing enzyme monoamine oxidase. Furthermore he explained the biosynthesis of catecholamines and was one of the leading researchers on catecholamines at his time.

An obituary can be found in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1996 vol 42 pp 39-60, plate, by G.V.R. Born and P. Banks.

In other repositories:

Correspondence with AV Hill, Cambridge University, Churchill Archives Centre; correspondence relating to Society for Protection of Science & Learning, Oxford University, Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts