Georgy Gause’s shift from ecology and evolutionary biology to antibiotics research: reasons,objectives, circumstances

Georgy Gause (1910–1986) is best known for his contribution to ecology and evolutionary theory. His book “The Struggle for Existence” (1934) inspired generations of ecologists. Yet his scientific interests were diverse, embracing many aspects of the life sciences and medicine. The most notable shift in his research took place in the early 1940s when he began to study antibiotics and discovered Gramicidin S. Superficially, this shift looked like an attempt to switch from purely theoretical to applied research during the years of World War II, but Gause’s decision may also have been seriously affected by the “Great Purge” and the growth of Lysenkoism. Personal factors played a significant role in his career too. In this article, we propose four factors which drove Gause to switch his focus from ecology to antibiotics: the inner logic of his scientific research, Stalin’s science policy and the growth of Lysenkoism, the sociopolitical influence of World War II, and personal relationships. We will also show how all these factors are interdependent to some extent.     

Martin Gibbs (1922–2006): Pioneer of 14C research, sugar metabolism & photosynthesis; vigilant Editor-in-Chief of Plant Physiology; sage Educator; and humanistic Mentor

The very personal touch of Professor Martin Gibbs as a worldwide advocate for photosynthesis and plant physiology was lost with his death in July 2006. Widely known for his engaging humorous personality and his humanitarian lifestyle, Martin Gibbs excelled as a strong international science diplomat; like a personal science family patriarch encouraging science and plant scientists around the world. Immediately after World War II he was a pioneer at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the use of ¹⁴C to elucidate carbon flow in metabolism and particularly carbon pathways in photosynthesis. His leadership on carbon metabolism and photosynthesis extended for four decades of working in collaboration with a host of students and colleagues. In 1962, he was selected as the Editor-in-Chief of Plant Physiology. That appointment initiated 3 decades of strong directional influences by Gibbs on plant research and photosynthesis. Plant Physiology became and remains a premier source of new knowledge about the vital and primary roles of plants in earth’s environmental history and the energetics of our green-blue planet. His leadership and charismatic humanitarian character became the quintessence of excellence worldwide. Martin Gibbs was in every sense the personification of a model mentor not only for scientists but also shown in devotion to family. Here we pay tribute and honor to an exemplary humanistic mentor, Martin Gibbs.     

Focus: A Multifaceted Battle Against Cancer: Ashley W. Oughterson,MD: Surgeon,Soldier, Leader

Ashley W. Oughterson, MD, (1895-1956) was a longtime faculty surgeon at Yale University. He performed some of the earliest pancreatic resections in the United States. During World War II, Colonel Oughterson was the primary “Surgical Consultant” in the South Pacific and present at nearly every major battle. His meticulously kept diary is regarded as the foremost source detailing wartime surgical care. Colonel Oughterson led the initial Army team to survey Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the nuclear attacks. Thoughout his academic career at Yale, Oughterson was a key leader in several medical and surgical societies. As scientific director of the American Cancer Society, Oughterson lectured widely and guided research priorities in oncology following World War II. Oughterson also authored numerous benchmark papers in surgical oncology that continue to be cited today. These extensive contributions are examined here and demonstrate the wide-ranging impact Oughterson exerted during a formative period of American surgery.     

History and status of embryology and developmental biology at Polish Medical Faculties and Schools

In Poland, medical embryology (both scientific research and teaching of the subject) has traditionally involved Chairs of Histology and Embryology rather than Obstetrics and Gynecology. Before World War II, the most buoyant centers for embryological research among the five universities at the time (in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Lvov and Vilnius), were the Chairs of Embryology and Histology at Medical Faculties of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the University of Vilnius. After World War II, eleven Medical Academies (Universities of Medicine) came into being (Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Lodz, Gdansk, Bialystok, Bydgoszcz, Szczecin, Wroclaw, Katowice and Lublin). They conduct scientific research on normal development of the human embryo as well as teratology studies. In the XX century, eminent medicine-related embryologist included professors Emil Godlewski Jr., Stanislaw Hiller and Stefan Baginski.     

Martin Gibbs and the peaceful uses of nuclear radiation, <Superscript>14</Superscript>C

This abstract is a prologue to this paper. Prior to his health failing, Martin Gibbs began writing remembrances of his education and beginning a science career, particularly on the peaceful uses of nuclear radiation, at the U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Camp Upton, NY. Two years before his death Martin provided one of us (Govindjee) a draft text narrating his science beginnings in anticipation of publication in Photosynthesis Research. Govindjee edited his draft and returned it to him. Later, when it became difficult for him to complete it, he phoned Govindjee and expressed the desire that Govindjee publish this story, provided he kept it close to his original. Certain parts of Martin’s narrations have appeared without references (Gibbs 1999). The Gibbs family made a similar request since the narrations contained numerous early personal accounts. Clanton Black recently presented an elegant tribute on Martin Gibbs and his entire science career (Black 2008). Clanton was given the draft, which he and Govindjee then agreed to finish. This chronicle is their effort to place Gibbs’s narrations about his education and his maturation scientifically, in context with the beginnings of biological chemistry work with carbon-14 at the BNL (see Gibbs 1999). Further, these events are placed in context with those times of newly discovered radioisotopes which became available as part of the intensive nuclear research of World War II (WW II). Carbon-14, discovered during WW II nuclear research in 1940, was extremely useful and quickly led to the rapid discovery of new carbon metabolism pathways and biochemical cycles, e.g., photosynthetic carbon assimilation, within a decade after WW II.

American Anthropology in the Middle Decades: A View from Hollywood

North American anthropology had an earlier interest in studies of the United States and in critical approaches than is often recognized. Such interests were pursued before World War II but were set aside during the war and in anthropology's postwar expansion. This perspective on anthropological history was inspired by the work of Hortense Powdermaker, specifically the disjunction between her 1930s research in segregated Mississippi and her pioneering study of Hollywood in the late 1940s. Reexamining that study highlights the theoretical framework that led to omissions in her account of Hollywood, while her explanation of movie content invites a more diachronic approach. Parallels between the history of the movies and that of cultural anthropology from the 1930s through the 1960s suggest how both were shaped by the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.     

Book notices

Communication among social bees, by Martin Lindauer The social behaviour of the bees: a comparative study, by Charles D. Michener     

Basic Science B.D. (before Drosophila): Cytology at Warsaw University (Poland)

The majority of modern research in cell and developmental biology is based almost exclusively on seven model organisms: mouse, zebra fish, Xenopus laevis frog, Drosophila fly, Caenorabditis elegans worm, Arabidopsis plant and yeast. Although the validity and practicality of these model systems and their impact on scientific progress are undeniable, the combination of goal-oriented science and the use of the model systems introduces, a priori, a dangerous limitation to scientific discovery. Consequently, many astonishing phenomena occurring in non-model organisms are either never studied or, disappear from scientific consciousness. A perfect example is the fate of the important studies by Professor Zygmunt Kraczkiewicz on chromatin diminution in Cecidomyiidae (Diptera) conducted before World War II and continued by his team until early 1990 in the Department of Cytology at Warsaw University in Poland. These light and electron microscopy studies have not been elevated to the molecular level, and although they deserve to be extensively studied and cited by researchers working in the field of soma and germ cell differentiation and specification, they have been, within the past 40 years, nearly completely wiped out of scientific memory. This article presents a short summary of this important research in the historical context of pre- and post-war science at Warsaw University in Poland.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: ANNUAL REVIEW OF ENTOMOLOGY, volume 21 (1976) (R. F. Smith, T. E. Mittler and C. N. Smith, Eds.). Martin Lindauer . Verständigung im Bienenstaat. Gustav Fischer.     

The Paleontological Institute during World War II: Academician A.A. Borissiak and the Moscow Group

This paper is one of the series of narratives about the Paleontological Institute during the World War II. Correspondence between A.A. Borissiak, who was in evacuation in the city of Frunze, and his colleagues left in charge of the institute in Moscow, is presented, concerning the extremely difficult task of protecting the collections.     

Vilray P. Blair, his surgical descendants, and their roles in plastic surgical development.

Perhaps one of the most historically well-known plastic surgeons is Vilray P. Blair. As commander of the U.S. Army corps of head and neck surgeons during World War I, he became well known for his work in posttraumatic reconstruction. Blair's efforts in the early part of this century helped to develop plastic surgery as a distinct surgical subspecialty in the United States. His prowess as a surgeon allowed him to build one of the largest plastic surgery centers in the country and to train many of the top young American surgeons. Blair excelled as a teacher. He produced academic surgeons such as James Barrett Brown and Bradford Cannon, who took the lead in the care of wartime injuries during World War II. At Valley Forge General Hospital, Blair's trainees dedicated themselves to the reconstruction of injured patients and trained other young plastic surgeons in the care of postwar trauma. This exceptional level of patient care resulted in the U.S. government recognizing plastic surgery as a subspecialty following World War II. Since that time, Blair's surgical descendants at Washington University have led the country in the development of new training concepts and ideals and have gone on to become leaders in plastic surgery worldwide.     

Biology and war--American biology and international science

The German-born American scientist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) was one of the most important promoters of experimental biology around 1900. He was best known for his physico-chemical explanations of psychological processes and his biotechnological approach to artificial parthenogenesis. At the start of the First World War, Loeb was deeply troubled by the deterioration of the international scientific community and the growing alienation of his German and American colleagues. The aim of this paper is to examine Jacques Loeb's activities aimed at advancing scientific internationalism before, during, and after the war. Loeb, for example, tried to negotiate the publication of German authors in American journals during the war, at a time when this was categorically rejected by publishers. Immediately after the war, he tried to create a specific system aimed at disseminating scientific literature and funding selected European colleagues, in order to overcome what he considered reactionary and hegemonic forces within German scientific institutions. His correspondence with eminent scientists from all over the world (amongst them Albert Einstein, Richard Goldschmidt, Otto Meyerhof, Otto Warburg, Paul Ehrlich, Wolfgang Ostwald, Wilhelm Roux, and Ross Harrison) will serve as a source for the analysis. Special emphasis will be placed on the question how Jacques Loeb integrated epistemology, his particular world view, and his social commitment into the workings of his own life and how he tried to extend his scientific goal of controlling biological systems to the sphere of international science.     

Taking the "I" out of IRB--and putting "community" in

If one looks back on the history of American research ethics, a bold pattern emerges. Since World War II, about every twenty years or so a breach of the social contract between investigators and human research subjects galvanizes public and professional interest in the ethical foundations and oversight mechanisms governing research with humans.     

Why a Symposium on Biology at Johns Hopkins?

From its inception in 1876, Johns Hopkins University has stoodout as an institution where the laboratory and experimentationhave been accorded the highest respect and priority, and wherethe most capable people have been chosen to occupy positionsof authority. The first president of the University, DanielGilman, was able to guide and shape the university unencumberedby outside influences and began the tradition of hiring thebest men to work with him. H. N. Martin and W. K. Brooks inbiology were two of these leaders in the early period of theuniversity (1876–1908). During the middle years (1909–1939), expansion dilutedfaculty and diverted them away from research and toward teaching.Herbert Spencer Jennings headed the Zoology Department duringthis middle period and in spite of the general trend away fromquality research activities, maintained a standard of excellencein his department. Another leader during this period and onewhom some consider more influential than Jennings was BurtonE. Livingston, chairman ofthe Plant Physiology Department. The modern period began in 1939 and saw some rebuilding of thebiological sciences after World War II, combining of the Zoology,Botany, and Plant Physiology Departments into one Biology Department,the building of the Mergenthaler Laboratory for Biology, themodernization of the department into one oriented toward molecularbiology, and a host of quality appointments. Most of these accomplishmentscan be attributed to H. B. Willier who headed the departmentfrom 1940 to 1955. Presently the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins Universityis one of this country's leading centers of molecular biology.     

Acrobat to academic: A sketch of the life and carrer of Frederick E. Samson,Jr.

Fred Samson's carrer began in osteopathy and show business. After service as a medic during World War II, he earned, a doctoral degree in physiology at the University of Chicago and joined the faculty of the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1952. There he conducted pioneering research on cerebral energy metabolism and axoplasmic transport while inspiring a generation of students in the classroom and lab. During the mid 1960s, he began a fruitful and lasting collaboration with the Neurosciences Research Program and its founder, Francis O. Schmitt. In 1973 he became director of the Ralph Smith Mental Retardation Research Center in Kansas City, where he added metabolic mapping of the brain in relation to seizure activity and drug toxicity to his research accomplishments. He retired in 1989, still pursuing new problems and continuing to inspire colleagues with his enthusiasm for neurochemistry and the joy of science.Special issue dedicated to Dr. Frederick E. Samson.     

The United States Army and malaria control in World War II

The United States Army faced difficult malaria control problems both at home and abroad during World War II. This challenge forced the Army to develop new tools and strategies for use in malarious areas where fighting was occurring. Due to the severe malaria problems being faced in some combat areas and the need to solve these problems quickly, intensive malaria research and operational programs were developed and implemented. With these concerted efforts and the simultaneous development of new control technologies, malaria was successfully controlled in most locations. In order to accomplish this high level of control both in the US and overseas, the Army developed a very organized approach to the malaria problem and implemented it in an effective manner. The creation of new technical solutions was also strongly emphasized and out of this effort came the development of effective antimalaria drugs to replace quinine, of new insecticides and of more effective systems for delivering these insecticides. Some of the major new tools which came out of this research were DDT and drugs such as Atabrine and chloroquine. The availability of Atabrine and DDT revolutionized malaria control throughout the world. The knowledge and experience gained through the use of these new tools by the US Army and other agencies in World War II provided the basis for a new optimism regarding malaria control which then led to the development of the global malaria eradication strategy in the post-war years.     

Osler usque ad mare: the SS William Osler

William Osler''s connections with the sea included a strong family history of seafaring, his own transatlantic crossings (of which there were at least 32) and the occasional use of nautical imagery in his inspirational writings. An unusual Oslerian connection with the sea emerged after his death in the form of a World War II Liberty ship. Through the SS William Osler and its sister ships, Osler was symbolically reunited with colleagues associated with the early days of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The William Osler circumnavigated the globe in 1943 without engaging the enemy. She was then converted into an army hospital ship and renamed the USHS Wisteria.     

Edmund Keffer Kline 1894-1976

It is with deep regret that the friends of Dr. E. K. Kline learned of his death on January 26th, 1976. Dr. Kline served with the Biological Stain Commission for many years, joining the Board of Trustees as representative of the American Public Health Association shortly after the reorganization of the Commission during the latter stages of World War II. Dr. Kline served as Vice-president of the Commission from 1963 to 1966, and as President from 1966 to 1969. His warm good nature and sound judgement combined effectively to help advance the goals of the Commission throughout his period of service, and his absence will be keenly felt.     

Camelot at Yale: The Construction and Dismantling of the Sapirian Synthesis, 1931-39

For a brief shining moment in the 1930s, Edward Sapir stood at the forefront of a new synthesis of Boasian ethnology and linguistics. But his call to Yale in 1931 was a mandate taken up against formidable odds, and the grand synthesis soon began to unravel. George Peter Murdock, who became chairman in 1939, moved the department toward science and "verified theory." In the period immediately following World War II, Sapir's program was not revived, but its legacies have come to us by way of the Yale ethnoscience and linguistic anthropology of the 1960s, and his synthesis remains a viable option for Americanist anthropology at the millennium.