Scientific exchange: Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) and Emil Godlewski (1875-1944) as representatives of a transatlantic developmental biology

The German-American physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) and the Polish embryologist Emil Godlewski, jr. (1875-1944) contributed many valuable works to the body of developmental biology. Jacques Loeb was world famous at the beginning of the twentieth century for his development and demonstration of artificial parthenogenesis in 1899 and his experiments on regeneration. He served as a role model for the younger Polish experimenter Emil Godlewski, who began his career as a researcher like Loeb at the Zoological Station in Naples. Following Godlewski's first visit to Naples in 1901 a close relationship between the two scientists developed. Until Loeb's death in 1924 the two exchanged ideas via correspondence that was only interrupted during the First World War. The aim of the paper is to examine the transatlantic transfer of knowledge in the field of biological experimentation that was fostered by these two protagonists. Using a modification of Bruno Latour's model of the 'Circulatory System of Science' as a heuristic tool, different mechanisms of scientific exchange are displayed. With the help of Loeb's and Godlewski's correspondence the role of scientific communities, methods, allies, the public and institutions in the process of knowledge transfer are analysed. Preconditions for success and failure in transferring science are examined.     

Malaria and World War II: German malaria experiments 1939-45

The epidemiological and pharmacological fight against malaria and German malaria research during the Nazi dictatorship were completely under the spell of war. The Oberkommando des Heeres (German supreme command of the army) suffered the bitter experience of unexpected high losses caused by malaria especially at the Greek front (Metaxes line) but also in southern Russia and in the Ukraine. Hastily raised anti-malaria units tried to teach soldiers how to use the synthetic malaria drugs (Plasmochine, Atebrine) properly. Overdoses of these drugs were numerous during the first half of the war whereas in the second half it soon became clear that it would not be possible to support the army due to insufficient quantities of plasmochine and atebrine. During both running fights and troop withdrawals at all southern and southeastern fronts there was hardly any malaria prophylaxis or treatment. After war and captivity many soldiers returned home to endure heavy malaria attacks. In German industrial (Bayer, IG-Farben) and military malaria laboratories of the Heeres-Sanit?ts-Akademie (Army Medical Academy) the situation was characterised by a hasty search for proper dosages of anti-malaria drugs, adequate mechanical and chemical prophylaxis (Petroleum, DDT, and other insecticides) as well as an anti-malaria vaccine. Most importantly, large scale research for proper atebrine and plasmochine dosages was conducted in German concentration camps and mental homes. In Dachau Professor Claus Schilling tested synthetic malaria drugs and injected helpless prisoners with high and sometimes lethal doses. Since the 1920s he had been furiously looking for an anti-malaria vaccine in Italian mental homes and from 1939 he continued his experiments in Dachau. Similar experiments were also performed in Buchenwald and in a psychiatric clinic in Thuringia, where Professor Gerhard Rose tested malaria drugs with mentally ill Russian prisoners of war. Schilling was put to death for his criminal research in 1946, Rose was condemned to lifelong imprisonment in 1947, though, not for his malaria research but for his dreadful experiments with epidemic typhus sera which he also had performed in concentration camps and with prisoners of war in Russia.     

Controlling Life: From Jacques Loeb to Regenerative Medicine

In his 1987 book Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology, Philip Pauly presented his readers with the biologist Jacques Loeb and his role in developing an emphasis on control of life processes. Loeb’s work on artificial parthenogenesis, for example, provided an example of bioengineering at work. This paper revisits Pauly’s study of Loeb and explores the way current research in regenerative medicine reflects the same tradition. A history of regeneration research reveals patterns of thinking and research methods that both echo Loeb’s ideology and point the way to modern studies. Pauly’s work revealed far more than we readers realized at the time of its publication.     

Rolf Bernander (1956–2014): pioneer of the archaeal cell cycle

On 19 January 2014 Rolf (‘Roffe’) Bernander passed away unexpectedly. Rolf was a dedicated scientist; his research aimed at unravelling the cell biology of the archaeal domain of life, especially cell cycle‐related questions, but he also made important contributions in other areas of microbiology. Rolf had a professor position in the Molecular Evolution programme at Uppsala University, Sweden for about 8 years, and in January 2013 he became chair professor at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner‐Gren Institute at Stockholm University in Sweden. Rolf was an exceptional colleague and will be deeply missed by his family and friends, and the colleagues and co‐workers that he leaves behind in the scientific community. He will be remembered for his endless enthusiasm for science, his analytical mind, and his quirky sense of humour.     

Scientific contributions of A. V. Hill: exercise physiology pioneer.

Beginning in 1910, A. V. Hill performed careful experiments on the time course of heat production in isolated frog muscle. His research paralleled that of the German biochemist Otto Meyerhof, who measured the changes in muscle glycogen and lactate during contractions and recovery. For their work in discovering the distinction between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism, Hill and Meyerhof were jointly awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Because of Hill's interest in athletics, he sought to apply the concepts discovered in isolated frog muscle to the exercising human. Hill and his colleagues made measurements of O(2) consumption on themselves and other subjects running around an 85-m grass track. In the process of this work, they defined the terms "maximum O(2) intake," "O(2) requirement," and "steady state of exercise." Other contributions of Hill include his discoveries of heat production in nerve, the series elastic component, and the force-velocity equation in muscle. Around the time of World War II, Hill was a leading figure in the Academic Assistance Council, which helped Jewish scientists fleeing Nazi Germany to relocate in the West. He served as a member of the British Parliament from 1940 to 1945 and as a scientific advisor to India. Hill's vision and enthusiasm attracted many scientists to the field of exercise physiology, and he pointed the way toward many of the physiological adaptations that occur with physical training.     

Genetics behind barbed wire: Masuo Kodani, émigré geneticists, and wartime genetics research at Manzanar relocation center

This article explores the sociopolitical backdrop of genetics research during the politically turbulent decades of the mid-20th century that saw the persecution, displacement, and relocation of unpopular minorities in both the United States and Europe. It explores how geneticists in the United States accommodated these disruptions through formal and informal émigré networks and how the subsequent war affected their research programs and their lives. It does so by focusing on the career and life of geneticist Masuo Kodani, who, as a Japanese American, found himself conducting unexpected cytogenetics research in Manzanar, a "relocation center," or internment camp, located in the California desert, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, Kodani's subsequent career continued to be shaped by his experiences as a Japanese American and by the specific skills as a cytogeneticist that he demonstrated at a critical period in the history of 20th-century genetics. His many relocations in search of employment culminated in his work with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on human chromosomes, for which he is best known.     

Evolutionary Morphology in Belgium

In historical literature, Edouard van Beneden (1846–1910) is mostly remembered for his cytological discoveries. Less well known, however, is that he also introduced evolutionary morphology – and indeed evolutionary theory as such – in the Belgian academic world. The introduction of this research programme cannot be understood without taking both the international and the national context into account. It was clearly the German example of the Jena University that inspired van Beneden in his research interests. The actual launch of evolutionary morphology at his University of Liège was, however, also connected with the dynamic of Belgian university reforms and the local rationale of creating a research “school.” Thanks to his networks, his mastering of the rhetoric of the “new” biology, his low ideological profile and his capitalising on the new academic élan in late-19th century Belgium, van Beneden managed to turn his programme into a local success from the 1870s onwards. Two decades later, however, the conceptual underpinnings of evolutionary morphology came under attack and the “Van Beneden School” lost much of its vitality. Despite this, van Beneden’s evolutionary morphology was prototypical for the research that was to come. He was one of the first scientific heavyweights in Belgium to turn the university laboratory into a centre of scientific practice and the hub of a research school.     

Johann Friedrich Meckel, Jr. as founder of scientific teratology

n the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his death, the scientific work of the famous German anatomist Johann Friedrich Meckel (1781 to 1833) in Halle is appreciated. The Younger Meckel is counted to the most outstanding figures in the history of anatomy and medicine in the first third of 19th century. According to his founded knowledges in the normal, comparative, and pathologic anatomy and embryology he was able to give a scientific argument of malformations first of all in the history of medicine and biology. The edition of Meckel's Handbook of Pathologic Anatomy (in German language; 1st vol. 1812) is the birth of scientific teratology. Through his contributions to teratology Meckel directly participated in the raising of general pathology and pathologic anatomy to scientific disciplines. Meckel's interceding for C. F. Wolff's theory of epigenesis, not at last by translation of Wolff's paper "De formatione intestinorum" (1768 to 1769) into the German language, accelerated the development of the general and special embryology during the 19th century. In the contemporary medicine the succeeding eponyms are reminding of the imposing German physician and anatomist: the Meckel's diverticulum of ileum (1809), the Meckel's cartilage of the mandibular arch (1820) and the so-called Meckel syndrome (1822).     

Computational biophysics and structural biology of proteins—a Special Issue in honor of Prof. Haruki Nakamura’s 70th birthday

Receiving his initial training jointly in theoretical and applied physics at the University of Tokyo, Professor Haruki Nakamura has had a long and eventful scientific career, along the way helping to shape the way that biophysics is carried out in Japan. Concentrating his research efforts on the simulation of protein structure and function, he has, over his career arc, acted as director of the Institute for Protein Research (Osaka, Japan), director of the Protein Data Bank of Japan (PDBj), president of the Biophysical Society of Japan (BSJ), president of the Protein Science Society of Japan (PSSJ), and group leader and professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Structural Biology at Osaka University. In 2022, Prof. Haruki Nakamura turned 70 years old, and to mark this occasion, his scientific colleagues from around the world have combined their efforts to produce this Festschrift Issue of the IUPAB Biophysical Reviews journal around the theme of the computational biophysics and structural biology of proteins.

The aim of this Festschrift Issue is to both acknowledge and celebrate the scientific career and achievements of Prof. Haruki Nakamura by publishing a series of review articles contributed by his former students and colleagues in the field of computational and structural biology. In this Editorial, we first provide some background to the articles published within this Special Issue (SI) before then going on to describe some background to Professor Nakamura’s life, research science, and professional endeavors.     

Determinants of scientific output: an in-depth view of the productivity of tropical botanist and conservationist, Luis Diego Gómez Pignataro

Bibliometric studies have found that male researchers have their greatest productivity around the age of 40, that female researchers produce less than their male colleagues, that incentives for collaboration are slow to affect productivity and that, just like humans, research institutes become larger, less productive, more expensive to maintain and less able to raise money as they grow old. Almost invariably, these conclusions come from statistical studies of large numbers of European and American scientists, and there are practically no studies about tropical researchers. We present an in-depth analysis of the productivity of an internationally recognized tropical botanist and conservationist, Luis Diego Gómez Pignataro, based on the totality of his published work and on our own knowledge, as co-workers and friends, of the life frame in which that scientific output was produced. His life output departs from the expected pattern in that he had the highest productivity before reaching the expected peak productivity age, and that when he reached it his productivity fell and never recovered. Furthermore, marriage did not produce the expected fall in productivity. A close analysis of his life indicates that in the middle of his career he switched to intense teaching and conservation activities, and this better explains why his output of scientific research articles was low afterwards. This switch may occur in other tropical scientists.     

On the relation between the Institut für Meereskunde in Berlin and the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland

The “Institut für Meereskunde” (IfM) in Berlin, founded in 1900, first took up marine biology as a section of its museum, in which emphasis was placed on the environment and the components of local ecosystems rather than on extraordinary species. The first joint research project of the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland (BAH) and the IfM in Berlin was instigated by the physicist A. Merz; it included several time-series of hydrographical and biological samples at fixed stations (light vessels) in the German Bight. When plans were made to establish a biological station in Constantinople during World War I, the colleagues in Berlin tried to change it into an integrated physicalbiological station, in which biological research would concentrate on revealing the laws of nature rather than simply describing the biosphere. During the recession after the war, the Prussian government was anxious to unite both institutions in order to save money. However, Mielck of the BAH succeeded in preventing the take-over by the Institute in Berlin. The relation between the two institutes stayed cool up to the destruction of the latter in 1945.     

‘Anthropology and Sociology Were of No Value … in War Time’: Ronald and Catherine Berndt and War-Time Security, 1939–1945

ABSTRACT

On 3 September 1939, Australia followed the United Kingdom in declaring war on Germany. Soon afterwards a number of German nationals including Australians of German descent were placed in internment camps. For those German enemy aliens and Australians of German heritage not interned, suspicion was never far from the surface. In the case of the anthropologist Ronald Murray Berndt, what initially put him under suspicion was not his political affiliations or actions, but his German name and some of his utterances on the war which were interpreted as being pro-German. Linked to this was a concern by Australian military and government authorities that Indigenous people were potentially disloyal, and anthropologists who worked with Indigenous Australians were, by the very nature of their relationship with them, considered potential subversives. However, although Ronald Berndt always worked with his wife Catherine, only Ronald was considered a security risk. Catherine was simply seen as his wife, part of a team, about whom nothing adverse was known. This article analyses the early career of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, and the restrictions and blocks they faced in accessing field sites during WWII. An easy answer to such impairments that was made at the time and later, was that Ronald was caught during WWII in a surveillance dragnet that focused on Germanness. The reality that emerges from the archival record, however, is far more complex, and shows amongst others, the exploitation of surveillance by local establishment gatekeepers.     

A Space of One’s Own: Barbosa du Bocage,the Foundation of the National Museum of Lisbon,and the Construction of a Career in Zoology (1851–1907)

This paper discusses the life and scientific work of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823–1907), a nineteenth-century Portuguese naturalist who carved a new place for zoological research in Portugal and built up a prestigious scientific career by securing appropriate physical and institutional spaces to the discipline. Although he was appointed professor of zoology at the Lisbon Polytechnic School, an institution mainly devoted to the preparatory training of military officers and engineers, he succeeded in creating the conditions that allowed him to develop consistent research in zoology at this institution. Taking advantage of the reconstruction and further improvement of the building of the Lisbon Polytechnic, following a violent fire in 1843, Bocage transferred a natural history museum formerly located at the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon to his institution, where he conquered a more prestigious place for zoology. Although successive governments were unwilling to meet Bocage’s ambitions for the Zoological Section of the newly created National Museum of Lisbon, the collaborators he found in different parts of the Portuguese continental territory and colonial empire supplied him the specimens he needed to make a career as a naturalist. Bocage ultimately became a renowned specialist in Southwestern African fauna thanks to José de Anchieta, his finest collaborator. Travels to foreign museums, and the establishment of links with the international community of zoologists, proved fundamental to build up Bocage’s national and international scientific reputation, as it will be exemplified by the discussion of his discovery of Hyalonema, a specimen with a controversial identity collected off the Portuguese coast.     

On Otto Warburg,Nazi Bureaucracy and the difficulties of moral judgment

Twentieth-century photosynthesis research had strong roots in Germany, with the cell physiologist Otto H. Warburg being among its most influential figures. He was also one of the few scientists of Jewish ancestry who kept his post as a director of a research institution throughout the Nazi period. Based on archival sources, the paper investigates Warburg’s fate during these years at selected episodes. He neither collaborated with the regime nor actively resisted; he was harrassed by bureaucracy and denunciated to the secret police, but saved by powerful figures in economy, politics, and science. Warburg reciprocated this favour with problematic testimonies of political integrity after 1945. Warburg’s case, thus, defies wellestablished notions of how scientists in Germany lived and worked during the Nazi regime, and, therefore, helps provide a more nuanced perspective on this theme.     

The correspondence of Thomas Dale (1700-1750): Botany in the transatlantic Republic of Letters

This paper seeks to provide a full account of the life and career of Dr. Thomas Dale (1700-1750), with particular reference to his botanical works and correspondence. Born in Hoxton, London, Dale studied medicine at Leiden and engaged fully in the social, literary and epistolary network in which botany was practised in eighteenth-century England. In 1730, however, Dale relocated to the British colonial port of Charles Town, South Carolina. Here he continued to engage in a transatlantic network of botanical exchange and discussion, corresponding on equal and reciprocal terms with his former colleagues in England. Where Dale differs from naturalists in South Carolina before him is that his motives for pursuing botany and for corresponding with English naturalists were located firmly in the New World. Such a conclusion forms a valuable, albeit small contribution to models for the development of national scientific cultures in the imperial world. Similarly, Dale's pursuit of botanical information in South Carolina provides a small amount of material with which to illustrate currently fashionable models for the mediated exchange and circulation of scientific knowledge.     

In memorium: Herman p. Schwan [1915-2005

Herman P. Schwan [1915-2005] was a distinguished scientist and engineer, and a founding father of the field of biomedical engineering. A man of integrity, Schwan influenced the lives of many, including his wife and children, and his many students and colleagues. Active in science until nearly the end of his life, he will be very much missed by his family and many colleagues.     

Gentlemanly Men of Science: Sir Francis Galton and the Professionalization of the British Life-Sciences

Because Francis Galton (1822–1911) was a well-connected gentleman scientist with substantial private means, the importance of the role he played in the professionalization of the Victorian life-sciences has been considered anomalous. In contrast to the X-clubbers, he did not seem to have any personal need for there forms his Darwinist colleagues were advocating. Nor for making common cause with individuals haling from social strata clearly inferior to his own. However, in this paper I argue that Galton quite realistically discerned in the reforming endeavors of the1860s, and beyond, the potential for considerably enhancing his own reputation and standing within both the scientific community and the broader Victorian culture. In addition, his professionalizing aspirations, and those of his reformist allies, were fully concordant with the interests, ambitions and perceived opportunities of his elite social group during the Victorian period. Professionalization appealed to gentlemen of Galton's status and financial security as much as it did to the likes of Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall, primarily because it promised to confer on the whole scientific enterprise an unprecedented level of social prestige. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Pavlov and the Rockefeller Foundation

Despite the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1920's, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research found ways to assist I.P. Pavlov. In addition to providing scientific literature and financial aid, these institutions and their officers rendered important moral support to the scientific career of Pavlov during his later years. In 1923, as a guest of the Rockefeller Institute, Pavlov visited American scientific laboratories. In 1924, he requested and received a number of books on physiology, and during the 1930's the Foundation helped him to acquire equipment for his Leningrad laboratory.     

The reactions on Hugo de Vries's Intracellular pangenesis: the discussion with August Weismann

In 1889 Hugo de Vries published Intracellular Pangenesis in which heformulated his ideas on heredity. The highexpectations of the impression these ideaswould make did not come true and publicationwas negated or reviewed critically. From thereactions of his Dutch colleagues and thediscussion with the famous German zoologistAugust Weismann we conclude that the assertionthat each cell contains all hereditary materialwas controversial and even more the claim thatcharacters are inherited independently of eachother. De Vries felt that he had to convincehis colleagues of the validity of his theory byproviding experimental evidence. He establishedan important research program which resulted inthe rediscovery of Mendel's laws and thepublication of The Mutation Theory.This article also illustrates somephenomena that go beyond an interesting episodein the development of theories of heredity. Itshows that criticism from colleagues can move aresearcher so deeply that he feels compelled toset up an extensive research program. Moreoverit illustrates that it is not unusual that acreative scientist is only partially willing totake criticism on his theories into account.Last but not least it demonstrates that commonopinion on the validity of specific argumentsmay change in the course of time.