Otto Hutter

Otto Fred Hutter (b 29 February 1924) is Emeritus Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Glasgow, is a physiologist. He was born in Vienna, becoming a British citizen in 1947.,[1][2] His father was an estate agent and his mother had been a nurse in World War 1. He first attended secondary school at the Zwi Perez Chajes Gymnasium. He left Vienna in December 1938[1] as part of the Kindertransport which allowed Jewish children to escape the German occupation. After arriving in the UK, he attended the Bishop Stortford College as a boarder. From 1942, after leaving school, he worked as a laboratory technician at the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories in Beckenham, Kent. One project addressed the standardisation of penicillin production, then of considerable importance for the war effort.

Otto Hutter
Hutter speaking at his 90th birthday
Born	Otto Fred Hutter (1924-02-29)29 February 1924 Vienna, Austria
Citizenship	British (since 1947)
Alma mater	University College London
Known for	nerve and muscle physiology cardiac pacemaker potential
Spouse(s)	Yvonne Hutter
Awards	Honorary Member of The Physiological Society
Scientific career
Fields	Physiology membrane biophysics electrophysiology
Institutions	University of Glasgow University College London
Doctoral advisor	Sir Charles Lovatt Evans
Notable students	Denis Noble

He studied physiology at Chelsea Polytechnic (as was) and chemistry at Birkbeck College at wartime evening classes. When the war ended, he took the BSc Physiology course at University College London. His initial research was on acetylcholine actions in nerve and muscle. His work developed to address the permeation of potassium in muscle. During a research fellowship in Baltimore, at the laboratory of Stephen Kuffler, he worked with another visitor, Wolfgang Trautwein. They made the first recordings using microelectrodes of the pacemaker potential in heart muscle to study the cardiac pacemaker. They researched the actions of acetylcholine (which slows heart rate) or adrenaline (which speeds it). Their recordings, made in tortoise heart, have become iconic medical and physiological textbook images of these phenomena.[3] Another major research interest of his has been the physiology of the chloride ion, a field which he has recently summarized in a personal review.[4]

References

1. Tansey, Tilli; Rosenberg, Martin. "An interview with Otto Hutter" (PDF). Physiological Society. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
2. University of Glasgow. "Biographical Webpage".
3. Miller, David. "My Top Ten Cardiac Muscle Papers". Retrieved 29 July 2015.
4. Hutter, Otto F. (1 March 2017). "A personal historic perspective on the role of chloride in skeletal and cardiac muscle". Physiological Reports. 5 (6): e13165. doi:10.14814/phy2.13165. ISSN 2051-817X. PMC 5371556. PMID 28320898.