Emigre
Neuroscientist’s Biography Presented at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI)
Research Day (May 28, 2020)
By Anzo
Nguyen
(http://emigreucalgary.blogspot.ca)
This update is part of the regular U of C Émigré
Project Updates: (http://emigreucalgary.blogspot.ca/2020/)
Last month, on May 28, 2020,
Anzo Nguyen presented a research poster in collaboration with Dr. Frank W.
Stahnisch at the annual Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) Research Day, which
took place as a half-day online symposium due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Research Day, which highlighted the work being done by HBI researchers and
trainees, included a virtual gallery of poster presentations. This poster,
titled “From Prague to the Prairies: Dr. Rudolf Altschul (1901-1963), a
Refugee Neuroscientist’s Plight”, provided a biographical account of one
German-speaking neuroscientist who eventually settled in the Canadian Prairies,
namely Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. As described in the previous blog article, Dr.
Altschul fled his native Czechoslovakia in 1939 due to the Nazi German
annexation of Bohemia, and after a cumbersome flight found refuge and settled
at the University of Saskatchewan to take up a position in the Department of
Anatomy. This poster, while chronicling Dr. Altschul’s resettlement and
academic career in the neurosciences in Canada, contextualizes his story in the
larger exodus of Jewish and oppositional academics from Central Europe in the
1930s. In addition, a parallel is drawn to the current refugee crisis in the
Middle East, where a similar mass emigration of at-risk academics is occurring.
The poster was designed primarily with these overarching contextual themes in
mind.
The link to view the poster can be found below:
Copyright note: the photographs in this poster were used,
and are now shared, with the express written consent and courtesy of the
University of Saskatchewan Archives and Special Collections from 10 June, 2020.
Permission to reproduce any images must, however, be addressed to them: https://library.usask.ca/archives/contact-us/index.php
