Viktor Hamburger, Ph.D., a founding father in the field of developmental neurobiology, lectures to a zoology class in 1960. Hamburger joined the zoology department in 1935 and chaired it from 1941-1966 before gaining emeritus status in 1968. Hamburger (1900-2001) was one of at least 15 intellectuals who migrated from Europe to Washington University between the end of World War I to shortly after World War II. Some were fleeing political oppression, others were escaping religious persecution — Hamburger was a native of Germany with Jewish ancestry. Nobel Prize-winners Carl and Gerty Cori were the first. Others included Egon Schwarz, professor emeritus of German and the Rosa May Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, who was a native of Vienna but forced to flee Europe in the 1940s and taught at the University for 32 years; and Gustav Shonfeld, the Samuel E. Schechter Professor of Medicine and a lipid expert, who survived Auschwitz and moved to St. Louis in 1946, joined the University faculty in 1972 and later chaired the Department of Internal Medicine.
Washington University is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2003-04.
