Alexander Hollaender
Alexander Hollaender (born December 19, 1898 in Samter , German Empire ; † December 6, 1986 ) was a German -American radiation biologist and biophysicist .
Alexander Hollaender came to the USA in 1921 and initially lived with an uncle in Birmingham , Alabama . On a trip to St. Louis he met Henrietta Wahlert, whom he married in 1925. From 1929 he studied at the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor's degree in 1930 and a doctorate in 1931. Even then, he was concerned with the interaction of molecules with radiation. He investigated the claim by Russian scientists that mitosis in cells emits radiation (see biophoton , then called mitogenic radiation with numerous publications) and traveled to the Soviet Union in 1931, but then he considered the evidence to be insufficient (1937). Hollaender investigated the influence of ultraviolet radiation on cells and found evidence in 1935 that cells could recover from it (a first indication of what was later explained as DNA repair). His investigations also gave the first indications of the role of nucleic acids in genetic material, because he found, when dermatophytes were irradiated with UV light, that the absorption spectrum of the cells that were damaged was in the range of the spectrum of nucleic acids and not of proteins. He published this in 1941 at a time when the opinion that nucleic acids played a special role in heredity was not yet widespread.
In 1937 he became a scientist at the Biophysics Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC During World War II, he served as a civilian with the Surgeon General's Office of Scientific Research and Development in the US Navy. From 1946 to 1966 he headed the biology department at Oak Ridge National Laboratory , which he expanded into a major research center for genetics and radiation biology. With the University of Tennessee he founded a graduate school for biomedicine in Oak Ridge . From 1967 he was a Senior Research Fellow at Oak Ridge. From 1970 to 1978 he was a consultant to the Department of Energy (DOE). In 1973 he left Oak Ridge and devoted himself to research planning in biology by founding the Council for Research Planning in Biological Sciences (headquartered at Associated Universities in Washington DC).
He was one of the founders of the Radiation Research Society in 1952 and its president in 1954 and founder of the Environmental Mutagen Society in 1970 .
Hollaender was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1957) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960). In 1968 he received the Finsen Medal , in 1979 the NAS Award for Environmental Quality and in 1983 the Enrico Fermi Prize . In 1970 he was Honorary President of the 3rd International Congress of Environmental Mutagenesis in Japan.
The Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics is named in his honor.
Fonts
- Editor: Radiation Biology, 3 volumes, McGraw Hill 1954 to 1956
- Editor: Chemical Mutagens, Principles and Methods of their Detection, 3 volumes, Plenum Press 1971, 1973
literature
- Richard B. Setlow: Alexander Hollaender (1898–1986), Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Science, 2011
Individual evidence
- ^ WD Claus, Hollaender, An experimental study of the problem of mitogenetic radiation, Bulletin 100, National Research Council, Washington DC 1937
- ^ CW Emmons, Hollaender, The action of ultraviolet radiation on Dermatophytes, 2 parts, J. Cell Comp. Physiol., Vol. 13, 1939, pp. 391-402, Am. J. Bot., Vol. 26, 1939, pp. 467-475
- ^ WC Emmons, Hollaender, Wavelength dependence of mutation production in the ultraviolet with special emphasis on fungi, Cold Spring Harbor Symposium 9, 1941, 179-186
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hollaender, Alexander |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 19, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Samter , German Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 6, 1986 |