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Hans Walter Kosterlitz

Berlin, Germany, 1903 - 1996

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About MeHow we feel pleasure and pain are fundamental to everyone. It was the work of Hans Walter Kosterlitz in Aberdeen which led to the ground-breaking discovery of endorphins, one of the 20th century’s most significant scientific developments.

Hans was forced to leave his native Germany in 1934 after anti-Semitic legislation barred him from his job in Berlin. He joined the staff of the University of Aberdeen the same year. He became a research assistant in the Physiology Department, under Professor J J R MacLeod. By 1968 Hans was appointed as the first Professor of Pharmacology at the University, and, despite officially retiring at the age of 70, he continued to carry out research into his 90s.

Throughout much of his career, Hans had been interested in the actions of morphine in isolated animal tissues which led him to reason that it mimicked the actions of substances that occurred naturally in the body. His perseverance finally brought a landmark breakthrough, when in 1975 at the age of 72, he discovered enkephalins. These are small proteins in the brain which, along with other similar molecules, are known collectively as endorphins. The discovery provided a leap forward for pharmacology, opening the floodgates for further research into how the body deals with pain.

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