Viktor Hamburger
Award Name : National Medal of Science
Year of Award : 1989
Award for : Biology
Location : Silesia, Maryland, United States
Viktor Hamburger was a German professor and embryologist. Viktor Hamburger was born on 9 July 1900 to Else and Max Hamburger in Landeschut, Silesia, near the border of what later became Poland and Czechoslovakia. Hamburger went to work at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy, after receiving his PhD. There he studied color vision in fish for one year, using behavioral techniques. He was invited by Otto Mangold to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem as a Research Associate in 1926. At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute he was able to conduct a follow-up experiment to his previous work on the coordination between limb and nerve development. In 1927 Spemann invited Hamburger back to the University of Freiburg with an Instructorship, a tenure track position. He taught and supervised laboratory courses until 1932, when he was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to bring Spemann’s technique of micro-surgery to the United States. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1989.