Jürgen Aschoff

Jürgen Walther Ludwig Aschoff (born January 25, 1913 in Freiburg im Breisgau; died October 11, 1998 in the same city) was a German biologist and behavior physiologist; together with Erwin Bünning and Colin Pittendrigh, co-founder of Chronobiology.

Life

Aschoff was born the fifth child of the pathologist Ludwig Aschoff (Aschoff Tawara knot) and his wife Clara. After the Abitur at a humanistic High School he - according to his own statement "lacking a specific interest"- he studied medicine in Bonn, where he joined the Burschenschaft Alemannia Bonn. After its conclusion in 1937 in Freiburg he got the venia legendi in 1944 and began his first employment as a professor in 1949 at Göttinger University as a physiologist.

Starting in 1952 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for medical research in Heidelberg. He was from 1967 to 1979 a director at the Max Planck Institute for behavior physiology in Andechs and extraordinary Professor in Munich. Aschoff was scientific member and member of the Kollegiums of the Max Planck Institute for behavior physiology as well as senator of the Max Planck Society from 1972 to 1976.

After his retirement and return to Freiburg Aschoff continued his scientific work in the form of further publications. Only the death of his wife Hilde broke his unusual vitality. Jürgen Aschoff died 10 months after his wife, after a short illness at the age of 85 years.

Work

His early publications were about physiology of thermal regularization. Nearly inevitably Aschoff determined there was a 24 hour rhythm of variations in body temperature, with his research on the body temperature of humans (also with self-investigations). But as "a lone wolf", as he called himself, he did not have contact with other scientists who concerned themselves with these phenomena. In addition the free-wheel rhythms of plants were unknown to him.

After he tried human temperature-regulation with self-experimentation on the 24-hour-rhythm, his interest grew in the reasons for the basic mechanisms. He began to make further experiments on this topic. Thus he raised birds with his own hands and observed some generations of mice, which he bred under constant conditions in the laboratory. After these experiments he postulated: "The rhythm is innate, and it does not require exposing to a 24-hour-day, in order to produce it."

Publications (Selection)

• „Beginn und Ende der täglichen Aktivität freilebender Vögel“ (mit R. Wever, 1962),
• „Circadian Clocks" (1965), "Desynchronization and Resynchronization of Human Circadian Rhythm“ (1969),
• „The Circadian System of Man“ (mit R. Wever, 1981).

References

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