20/09/2021 23:19 Viktor Hamburger (1900-2001)

    
   
  Viktor Hamburger (1900-2001)  
   
   
   
   
   
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"Our real teacher has been and still is the embryo,
who is, incidentally, the only teacher who is always
right." Viktor Hamburger
Viktor Hamburger died June 12, 2001, one month shy of
his 101st birthday. Born in Landeshut, Silesia (then part of
Germany; now within Poland), Viktor grew up with a
passion for outdoor activities, especially observing and
collecting insects and larvae in the fields and ponds near
the family home. Following training in Zoology at Breslau,
Heidelberg, and Munich, Viktor became a graduate student
in the laboratory of Hans Spemann at Freiburg, during the
period when the organizer was discovered and concepts of
tissue interaction and cell determination were having their
initial bloom.

Following post-doctorates in Göttingham and Berlin-

Dahlem, then an instructorship back at Freiburg, Viktor
accepted a Rockefeller Fellowship to study in Frank
Lillie's lab at Chicago, bringing the precepts and methods
of experimental embryology to a lab in which the chick
embryo was atop the pecking order. Due to political
changes in his homeland, in 1935 Viktor began a nearly
50-year tenure at Washington University in St. Louis,
including 25 years as chairman of the Zoology
Department. He also participated for many years in the
Embryology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratories
in Woods Hole, continuing the fondness for comparative
embryology developed earlier. His Manual of
Experimental Embryology, first published in 1942,

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20/09/2021 23:19 Viktor Hamburger (1900-2001)

demystified accessing and manipulating early embryos for

several generations of students.

While embracing the methods of experimental

embryology, which combine an analytical approach with
the aesthetic appeal of directly engaging the living embryo,
it was applications of these methods to problems of the
developing nervous system that most captivated Viktor and
set the directions he would actively pursue throughout his
career. Viktor's early studies on redirected axon outgrowth
led him to postulate that trophic factors released by nerves
and target tissues are necessary for the proper development
of both. His subsequent studies showing that motor neuron
survival was dependent upon the amount of target tissue
available furthered this belief. During these studies
involving chick wing transplantations or extirpations,
Viktor discovered that up to 60% of developing motor
neurons die in normal embryos. This discovery of
programmed cell death, which is a critical component of
most developing tissues, has recently emerged as a major
focus in biomedical research.

Viktor's interests in nerve-target interactions led to, among

others, his deep admiration for and friendship with Ross
Harrison, whose frequent visits to Freiburg had been a
source of much inspiration during Viktor's student days.
Shortly after the World War II, Viktor invited Rita Levi-
Montalcini to join him at Washington University and
investigate what seemed to be substantial differences in
trophic effects on embryonic sensory and motor neurons.
This collaboration led to the first identification of a
developmental growth factor, Nerve Growth Factor, which
is essential for the differentiation and survival of many
sensory and sympathetic (but not motor) neurons. Viktor
certainly appreciated the irony that decades of
unsuccessful attempts to isolate the chemical nature of
Spemann's Organizer were eclipsed by this discovery of a
neuron-specific trophic factor. Today, hundreds of growth
factors acting often in concert are known to modulate cell
phenotype in embryonic and adult tissues, and several of
Viktor's early NGF collaborators shared in receiving the
Nobel Prize in 1986.

Viktor, however, turned his attention to functional aspects

of neurogenesis, investigating the interactions necessary
for the orderly development of embryonic motility and
patterns of limb movement. His goal was to dissect those
network components that come into play independent of
inputs from those requiring functional feedback. He and
his colleagues isolated parts of the embryonic nervous
system and found that most behavior-generating neuronal
networks develop normally. As always it was the chick
embryo that served as model system. Indeed, it is because
of the stage series of chick development he and Howard
Hamilton devised in the early 1950's that Hamburger's
name is most widely known among students of vertebrate
development.

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20/09/2021 23:19 Viktor Hamburger (1900-2001)

Though best known for his work in experimental

embryology and neuroembryology, Viktor's interests and
life perspectives were very much a melding of natural
sciences with philosophy, literature and the arts. His
publication topics range from color changes in fish during
their mating season to the geology of Silesia, from
mechanistic explanations of human birth defects (in the
1930's) to analyses of the influence of vitalism on early
embryologists. The Heritage of Experimental Embryology:
Hans Spemann and the Organizer (1988) brings to the
current generations a sense of the excitement and
uncertainties present during this early period of discovery,
illuminating the personalities and conceptual perspectives
of key researchers involved.

Viktor touched all who knew him by his wisdom, dignity,

generosity and kindness. He had little patience for
imprecision of thought or language, in science and also
other endeavors, but taught always by example rather than
criticism. In his presence events seemed more purposeful
and disciplined, yet his conversations betrayed a
wonderful, often playful sense of humor. Viktor knew and
worked with many of the founders of experimental
embryology during the first half of the 20th century, but
did not dwell upon this past with nostalgia. Rather, he
taught that the ideas enabling great accomplishments in
science are timeless, and we who practice - or are learning
to practice - developmental biology today benefit by
understanding not only what our predecessors
accomplished but also why and how they did so.

A full description of the life, publications, and many

awards of Viktor Hamburger is available through the
Washington University Library web site
(http://library.wustl.edu/units/biology/vh/). Portrait photo
above courtesy of Washington University archives. Stage
21 (4-day) chick embryo above from "A series of normal
stages in the development of the chick embryo." J. Morph.
88:49-92 (1951).

Drew M. Noden
Professor of Embryology and Animal Development
Department of Biomedical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-6401

 
         
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