Rudolf Altschul (1901–1963)

Excerpt

In the wake of the seizure of power by the National Socialist Party in 1933 came about one of the largest mass exoduses of intellectuals in history, as thousands of Jewish, socialist, and other oppositional academics fled Germany as refugees. With the annexation of the Sudetenland (1938) and later Bohemia and Moravia (1939) by Germany, more academics were uprooted from their homelands in the former Czechoslovakia [1]. One such individual was Dr. Rudolf Altschul (1901–1963), a German-speaking neurologist, anatomist, and later cardiologist. A brief account of Altschul’s emigration and settlement to Canada provides an insightful case study for the greater migration wave, and its implications on the academic networks of the host countries of refugee neuroscientists since the 1930s. At the same time, the case of Dr. Altschul offers detailed insights into research in neuroanatomy, especially that of neuromuscular interactions, and the implications of atherosclerosis on the Central Nervous System (CNS). While Altschul has an extensive bibliography to his name before his exile, this article will focus on his career in Canada after 1939. …