Gustav Victor Born (Gus) was a pharmacologist whose work revolutionized the study of blood platelets and paved the way for modern antiplatelet therapy. Born on 29 July 1921 in Gottingen, Germany, he was the only son of Max Born, the director and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Gottingen. His mother was Hedwig (Hedi) née Ehrenberg, a writer and poet of some repute, and he had two elder sisters, Irene and Margaret (Gritli). After primary education locally, he began secondary school, but in 1933 his father lost his post and the family were advised to leave Germany due to their Jewish origins. They moved to Cambridge, where he attended the Perse School from 1933 to 1936, and then to Edinburgh where he attended the Edinburgh Academy and enrolled at the University to study medicine in 1938. The family were pacifists and, with the possibility of war on the horizon, his father advised him to become a doctor as he would then not have to kill anyone. He qualified MB, BCh in 1943 and did various house jobs, including working with James Learmonth at the Western General Hospital. He enrolled in the RAMC (under the surname ‘Buchanan’ as he felt ‘Born’ was too Germanic) and was posted to India, eventually working as a clinical pathologist. From there, in 1945, he was sent to Japan and stationed at an Army base four miles from Hiroshima. Among the horrific injuries he witnessed, what struck him most forcefully was the severe bleeding the victims suffered caused by radiation damage to the bone marrow. It was an observation that was to set the course of his most important future research. Demobilised in 1947, he returned to the UK and reverted to his proper surname – apparently sending his friends a telegram reading *Born again!*. Keen to work with Howard Florey at the William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford, his application for a research studentship was accepted in 1948 and he graduated DPhil in 1951. After two years at a MRC research unit in Surrey he returned to Oxford as demonstrator of anatomy in the department of pathology and began his work on platelets. In 1960 he was appointed Vandervell professor of pharmacology to the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and commenced a fruitful partnership with his Oxford friend and colleague John Vane (later to share a Nobel prize for his work on aspirin). He remained at the college for 13 years and it was here that he was to carry out some of his most important research. A particular innovation was the *Born aggregometer* which became used worldwide in hospitals and laboratories as a means of diagnosing platelet disorders. In 1973 he was appointed to the Shield chair in pharmacology at Cambridge University and in 1978 left to take up the post of professor of pharmacology at King’s College, London, eventually retiring in 1986, aged 65. This last appointment was probably more congenial as his family had remained in London and he found the regular commute to Cambridge quite a strain. Two years later, in 1988, he again got together with John Vane at Barts Hospital where they established the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI) and were involved in the reorganisation of the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. At the WHRI he continued his research into atherosclerosis before finally retiring in his 87th year. A highly cultured man, he was particularly keen on music, playing the piano and the flute which he played to almost professional standards. Probably arising from his post war experiences, he founded an organisation called *Pugwash* which promoted the cause of nuclear disarmament. In the days well before mobiles his love of the telephone was legendary and it was said that he would stop on his way to work to ‘phone his instructions to his lab assistants from a call box rather than issue them in person. Professional colleagues were wearily accustomed to receiving calls from him at eccentric hours from all over the world. He married (Wilfreda) Ann Plowden-Wardlow, a doctor and psychoanalyst, in Edinburgh in 1950. They had three children: Max Russell (born 1951), Sebastian John Paul (born 1953) and Georgina Emma Mary (born 1955). The marriage ended in divorce in 1961 and the following year he married Faith Maurice-Williams, also a doctor, and they had two children, Carey and Matthew. When he died on 16 April 2018 aged 96 years, Faith survived him together with his five children.