Gustav Jacob Born

Who was Gustav Jacob Born?

Gustav Jacob Born was a German histologist and author. He was the father of Max Born.

Born was a native of Kempen, Province of Posen. He received his education first at the gymnasium of Görlitz, Prussian Silesia, where his father practised as a physician and held the position of Kreisphysicus, and afterward at the universities of Breslau, Bonn, Strassburg, and Berlin, graduating as physician from Breslau in 1876. In the same year he was appointed assistant prosector and Privatdozent at the University of Breslau, and in 1877 prosector. In 1886 he was elected assistant professor, and in 1898 professor of histology and comparative anatomy, at the same university, receiving the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle of the fourth class in the latter year.

Born was married twice. His wife Gretchen Kauffmann gave birth to Max and a daughter Käthe, but she died on 29 August 1886. Gustav married a second time; his second wife, Bertha Lipstein, gave birth to another son, Wolfgang.

Several technical inventions, as well as new methods in the field of microscopy and embryology, made Born's name prominent in his lifetime. Among these was a method for reproducing and plastically enlarging small anatomical and embryological objects, which was described in Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Mikroscopie, vol. v.