Albrecht Julius Theodor Bethe (25 April 1872 in

Stettin Szczecin ( , , ; ; ; or ) is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major seaport, the largest city of northwestern Poland, and se ...

– 19 October 1954 in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

) was a German

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out chemical and ...

and was the father of physicist,

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Eduard Bethe (; ; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physi ...

(1906–2005). He studied at the universities of

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

(under

Richard Hertwig Richard Wilhelm Karl Theodor Ritter von Hertwig (23 September 1850 in Friedberg, Hesse – 3 October 1937 in Schlederloh, Bavaria), also Richard Hertwig or Richard von Hertwig, was a German zoologist and professor of 50 years, notable as the fi ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

and

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

(under Friedrich Goltz and

Ernst Julius Richard Ewald Ernst Julius Richard Ewald (14 February 1855 – 22 July 1921) was a German physiologist born in Berlin. He was a younger brother to gastroenterologist Carl Anton Ewald (1845–1915). In 1880, after finishing his studies in mathematics, physics an ...

); receiving his PhD in 1895, at Munich. From 1896 to 1911, he worked at the Institute of Physiology in Strasbourg, where in 1898, he obtained his doctorate in medicine. In 1911 he became a professor of physiology at the

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, (, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a public research university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the ''Academia Holsator ...

, and four years later, relocated as a professor to the University of Frankfurt. In 1937, he was relieved of his professorial duties at Frankfurt (his wife was deemed to be half-Jewish by the Nazis), only to have them reinstated following the end of wartime hostilities in Europe.Bethe, Albrecht
The Virtual Laboratory He is well known for his studies involving the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...

of invertebrates. He believed in the "

plasticity Plasticity may refer to: Science * Plasticity (physics), in engineering and physics, the propensity of a solid material to undergo permanent deformation under load * Behavioral plasticity, change in an organism's behavior in response to exposur ...

" of the nervous system, asserting that if one part of the brain is damaged, another part could learn the functions of the damaged portion. He was a co-editor of '' Pflüger's Archiv für die gesamte Physiologie'' (from 1918 onward) and of the ''Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie'' (1925–32). The young physician Rose Hölscher made a

silhouette A silhouette (, ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouett ...

of him, published in the 1921 booklet ''Frankfurter Charakterköpfe'' with portraits of prominent Frankfurt physicians.

Selected works

* ''Formaldehyd! Nicht Formol oder Formalin'', 1895. * ''Eine neue Methode der Methylenblaufixation'', 1896. * ''Allgemeine Anatomie und Physiologie des Nervensystems'', 1903. * ''Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie, mit Berücksichtigung der experimentellen Pharmakologie'' (multi-volume, with Gustav von Bergmann, Gustav Georg Embden and Alexander Ellinger); from 1925 onward.HathiTrust Digital Library
published works

References

1872 births 1954 deaths Physicians from Szczecin Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Academic staff of Goethe University Frankfurt Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg Academic staff of the University of Kiel German physiologists {{Germany-scientist-stub