Alexander Gavrilowitsch Gurwitsch

Alexander Gawrilowitsch Gurwitsch ( Russian Александр Гаврилович Гурвич , scientific transliteration Aleksandr Gavrilovič Gurvič ; * September 26th ^July / October 8th  1874 ^greg. In Poltava , Russian Empire , today Ukraine ; † July 27, 1954 in Moscow ), was a Russian in Moscow Biologist and physician of Jewish origin.

Gurwitsch made contributions to the concept of the hypothetical morphic field from developmental biology and is considered to be the first to describe an extremely weak photon emission of biological systems, which he called mitogenic radiation and which is now referred to by the term ultra- weak photon emission (also ultra-weak cell radiation ), and which also refers to it invoke the hypotheses of the biophotons .

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Study and first research

Alexander Gurwitsch came from a Jewish family with partly Baltic roots. Since his main interests lay in music and art, he tried to be accepted at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich after graduating from high school . But Gurwitsch did not pass the entrance exam and decided to study at the medical faculty of the University of Munich . In the third or fourth year of his studies he began to work in the laboratory of Karl Wilhelm von Kupffer , who is now considered one of the co-founders of modern embryology . Gurwitsch developed an interest in embryology and his first publication followed in 1895, which dealt with the effects of chemicals on the gastrulation of frogs .

After graduating from the University of Munich in 1897, he took an exam at the University of Kiev to be able to practice as a doctor. A little later he got a position at the anatomical faculty of the University of Strasbourg. Gurwitsch was actually aiming for a university career in Russia, but due to his Jewish origins it was not possible for him to work in Russia at the time. He later moved to the Faculty of Anatomy at the University of Bern where he worked as a private lecturer . In 1903 he married the Russian Lidija Dmitrijewna Felizina, whom he had met at the medical faculty in Bern and who supported him throughout his life in his research. In 1904 Gurwitsch's monograph “Morphology and Biology of the Cell” appeared , which earned him international recognition as a histologist .

Return to Russia

In 1905 Alexander Gurwitsch returned to Russia with his wife, as he was drafted as a conscript during the Russo-Japanese War . A little later he took over a professorship for anatomy and histology at the Bestuzhev Women's College in Saint Petersburg . During this time he formed his general conceptual approach to understanding biological problems. He was one of the few biologists who also had excellent knowledge of physics and mathematics. One of Gurwitsch's closest friends was the physicist and later member of the Academy of Sciences Leonid Isaakowitsch Mandelstam , who, among other things , brought Gurwitsch closer to Einstein's theories . In 1907 Gurwitsch's first major work on the embryology "Atlas and outline of the embryology of vertebrates and humans" was published. A little later Gurwitsch investigated the cell division in symmetrical organisms such as sea ​​urchin eggs . He found out that the number of cell divisions at the same point in time in the different halves of the symmetrical organism is never the same. Gurwitsch concluded that the individual cell divisions within the organism take place more or less randomly and assumed that the cells are influenced by integration factors or supracellular regulation in order to obtain their final shape.

Morphic Field Theory

Sketch of the morphic field postulated by Gurewitsch as a vector field

In 1912 Gurwitsch published his work "Inheritance as Realization Process" in which he hypothesized that a field of activity or a force field is responsible for the morphogenesis of organisms. Gurwitsch later referred to this field as the "embryonic field". Similar assumptions had already been made 20 years earlier by the German biologist Hans Driesch , who assumed the existence of such a field in a neo-vitalist sense as entelechy (“which carries its goal within itself”). Theodor Boveri made further contributions as early as 1910 . Although Gurwitsch used the term inheritance in his publications, he was a strict opponent of the theories of the geneticists of the time around Thomas Hunt Morgan . This attitude also contributed to the fact that Gurwitsch was little recognized among Russian biologists at the time.

World War I and the discovery of mitotic radiation

During the First World War Gurwitsch had to stop his research and worked as a military surgeon in Petrograd . After the war, Gurwitsch got a job at the newly founded Tauride National University and moved with his family to Simferopol in the Crimea in autumn 1918 . At the university he worked as the head of the histological department of the medical faculty. In 1923, while studying the cell division of onion cells , Gurwitsch discovered photon emission in the spectral range around 260 nm. Gurwitsch suspected that this radiation could stimulate the mitosis of cells and therefore called the radiation mitogenic radiation . This discovery of radiation, now known as ultra-weak photon emission , was later questioned after initial worldwide recognition and classified as unimportant. Nevertheless Gurwitsch occupied himself with the investigation of the phenomenon until the end of his life.

Work in Moscow and Leningrad

In 1924 Gurwitsch was appointed professor at the Faculty of Histology and Embryology at Moscow State University . Here he continued to study mitogenic radiation. In 1929 Gurwitsch was forced to leave the university after a dispute with the university administration. In 1930 Gurwitsch received a position at the Institute for Experimental Medicine in Leningrad, where other important scientists such as Ivan Pavlov were also working at the time . In 1934 he took part in the International Congress of Radiobiology in Venice and gave lectures in several European countries. In 1941 he received the Stalin Prize for his studies of mitogenic radiation in connection with the diagnosis of cancer . In addition, Guryevich was a holder of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor . During the German-Soviet War Gurwitsch was not able to carry out experiments. In autumn 1941 the Wehrmacht stood before Leningrad and Gurwitsch, and his wife and daughter Anna were flown to Kazan . Here Gurwitsch concentrated entirely on purely theoretical work. There were no ways to conduct any experiments. His field theory of morphogenesis got its final form here as a vectorial biological field . In 1944 the corresponding work was published in Russian as Teorija biologitscheskowo polja ( Теория биологического поля ), and in 1947 also in French.

Last years

After the war, Alexander Gurwitsch became head of the cell biology department of the Institute for Experimental Biology, which was attached to the new Soviet Academy for Medical Sciences. In the same year Trofim Lysenko organized the notorious August meeting of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. A period of enforced obedience to dogma began in all areas of biology. Gurwitsch protested, submitted his resignation and went into retirement. In 1951, Gurevich's wife and long-time employee Lydija died. Gurwitsch continued to work in his apartment and de facto continued to head the more and more scaled-down laboratory for cell division, which was completely closed in 1953 and reopened shortly afterwards. A number of volunteers worked in a confined space under the direction of his daughter Anna Gurwitsch and Viktor Jeremejew. During this time, Alexander Gurwitsch mainly devoted himself to his last work: "Analytical Biology" . However, this book was no longer published. He gave his last lectures from 1953 to 1954 in his apartment.

Alexander Gurwitsch died on July 27, 1954 at the age of 79 of a heart condition.

Works (selection)

• Cell morphology and biology . G. Fischer, Jena 1904.
• Atlas and ground plan of the embryology of vertebrates and humans . JF Lehmann, Munich 1907.
• About determination, normalization and chance in ontogeny. In: W. Roux 'Archive for Development Mechanics. 30, 1910, pp. 133-193.
• Inheritance as a process of realization. In: Biological Zentralblatt. 32, 1912, pp. 458-486.
• About the concept of the embryonic field (original title: O ponjatii ėmbrional'nych polej ). In: W. Roux 'Archive for Development Mechanics. Sl, 1922, pp. 353-415.
• with LD Gurvič: Mitogenetičeskij analiz biologii rakovoj kletki. All-Russian Institute of Experimental Medicine, 1937, p. 79.
• Teorija biologičeskogo polja. Sovetskaja nauka, 1944, p. 155.
• Mitogenic spectral analysis by selective scattering methods. In: Acta Physica et Chimica. 20, 1945, pp. 635-644.
• with LD Gurvič: Vvedenie v učenie o mitogeneze. Institute for Experimental Biology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1948, p. 115.

literature

• LV Beloussov, JM Opitz, SF Gilbert: Life of Alexander G. Gurwitsch and his relevant contribution to the theory of morphogenetic fields . In: The International Journal of Developement Biology. 41 (1997), pp. 771-779 text as PDF
• Fritz-Albert Popp , KH Li, Qiao Gu: Vitalistic Entelechia Principle. In: Recent advances in biophoton research and its applications. World Scientific Publishing, Singapore 1992, ISBN 981-02-0855-3 , p. 470ff (excerpt from Google Books)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Mirra Aspiz: Ėto byl krupnejšij učenyj. Lechaim 2004 (Russian)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Scott F. Gilbert, Susan R. Singer: The "re-discovery" of morphogenic fields. ( Memento from September 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: Developmental Biology. 8., revised. Edition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, ISBN 0-87893-250-X . (English)
3. ^ VA Gurwitsch: About the concept of the embryonic field. In: Roux 'Arch. Ent. Org. 51, 1922, pp. 383-415.
4. ↑ K. Sander: Of gradients and genes: Developmental concepts of Theodor Boveri and his students. In: Roux 'Arch. Dev. Biol. 203, 1994, pp. 295-297. (English)
5. ↑ BM Vladimirskij, EN Čujan: AG Gurvič i ego vydajuščiesja učeniki GM Frank i AA Ljubiščev. ( Memento from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Učenye zapiski Tavričeskogo nacional'nogo universiteta im. VI Vernadskogo Serija Biologija, himija. Tom 21 (60), Simferopol 2008, p. 39. (Russian; PDF file; 3.9 MB)
6. ↑ ^{a b} Fritz-Albert Popp: Historical development of biophotonics. ( Memento of December 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
7. ↑ Article Гурвич Александр Гаврилович in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D017130~2a%3D%D0%93%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87%20%D0%90%D0%BB% D0% B5% D0% BA% D1% 81% D0% B0% D0% BD% D0% B4% D1% 80% 20% D0% 93% D0% B0% D0% B2% D1% 80% D0% B8% D0% BB% D0% BE% D0% B2% D0% B8% D1% 87 ~ 2b% 3D% D0% 93% D1% 83% D1% 80% D0% B2% D0% B8% D1% 87% 20% D0% 90% D0% BB% D0% B5% D0% BA% D1% 81% D0% B0% D0% BD% D0% B4% D1% 80% 20% D0% 93% D0% B0% D0% B2% D1% 80% D0% B8% D0% BB% D0% BE% D0% B2% D0% B8% D1% 87

Web links

• Literature by and about Alexander Gawrilowitsch Gurwitsch in the catalog of the German National Library