Arnold washer

Arnold Scheibe (born October 20, 1901 in Greiz ; † April 13, 1989 in Göttingen ) was a German agricultural botanist , plant breeder and crop scientist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Scheibe ".

Life path

Arnold Scheibe, the son of a textile manufacturer, attended the humanistic grammar school in Zeitz , completed a two-year apprenticeship on seed farms in Silesia and studied agriculture at the Technical University of Munich since 1923 . In 1926 he passed the exam to become a qualified farmer. Under the aegis of Ludwig Kießling , he received his doctorate in Munich in 1927 with a thesis on the transpiration behavior of the genus Triticum . In the same year he went to the USA and Canada as an exchange student, where he dealt with issues of resistance breeding. From 1928 he worked in the botany laboratory of the Biological Reichsanstalt for Agriculture and Forestry in Berlin-Dahlem. Investigations of cereal rust mushrooms and problems of the seed quality in oats were the focus of his research.

In 1931, Scheibe went to Anatolia. On behalf of the Turkish government, he built a seed breeding institute there. In 1934 he returned to Germany and completed his habilitation in the field of plant cultivation and plant breeding at the University of Gießen with a thesis on wild sugar beet in Anatolia. In 1935 he led the German Hindu Kush Expedition , whose participants collected seeds from wild and cultivated plants in east Afghanistan and north-west India. As a lecturer at the Institute for Plant Cultivation and Plant Breeding at the University of Gießen, he was mainly concerned with the cultivation and breeding of oil plants in the following years. In 1941 he was appointed full professor and director of the Institute for Arable and Plant Production at the Technical University of Munich as the successor to his teacher Ludwig Kießling . From 1941 to 1944, as Scientific Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, he was also in charge of setting up a German-Bulgarian Institute for Agricultural Research in Sofia. In 1946 he left the teaching staff at the Technical University of Munich.

In 1948, Scheibe took over the “Department of Crop Production and Breeding Biology” as director of the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research , based at Gut Neuhof near Gießen. From there he held a teaching position for plant breeding at the agricultural faculty of the University of Bonn from 1951 to 1953 . In 1951 he was also appointed full professor and director of the newly founded Institute for Grassland Management and Forage Production at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. As a result, his place of work at the Max Planck Society in Gut Neuhof was linked to this university institute in personal union. In 1955, Scheibe followed a call to the University of Göttingen . As the successor to Otto Tornau , he was full professor and director of the Institute for Plant Cultivation and Plant Breeding until his retirement in 1970.

Research services

The leitmotif of Scheibe's research was to carry out crop plant research with special consideration of physiological, biochemical and genetic aspects using the methods of modern natural sciences. Building on the material collected from the Hindu Kush expedition, he devoted himself to the cultivation and breeding of field crops, primarily under the aspect of their valuable ingredients. His main areas of work included the breeding development of protein-rich barley and increasing the oleic and fatty acid content of poppy seeds , rape and safflower . As one of the first discs to be used, systematic mutation induction by X-rays for the experimental domestication of wild forms and genotypes desired by breeding . He paid particular attention to growing peas. Some of the varieties bred by him with high stability (fasciata type) found widespread use in agricultural practice. He led a total of 40 students to doctorate, 25 of them at the University of Göttingen.

Other activities

The tasks of academic self-government that were assigned to Scheiben during his term in office in Göttingen were varied. In the 1959/60 year of office he was dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, and for the years 1962/63 and 1963/64 he was elected rector of the university. During this time he had to bring about far-reaching decisions about the expansion of the Göttingen University.

In connection with his work on experimental mutation induction with X-rays and radiochemicals , he was a member of the German Atomic Energy Commission from 1956 to 1967 and chaired the "Expert Commission for Medicine, Biology and Agriculture". From 1957 to 1969 he was a member of an international advisory body for the promotion of agriculture in Sudan.

In terms of his overall research concept, Scheibe saw himself first and foremost as an agricultural botanist. For 63 years he was a member of the " Association for Applied Botany ". This professional society was his actual scientific home. Here he saw the physiological, biochemical and genetically oriented crop plant research best represented. From 1952 to 1964 he played a key role in shaping the scientific profile of this specialist society as deputy chairman and then until 1974 as chairman.

Scheibe is the author of a textbook on plant breeding that built on the lectures he has given at the University of Bonn since 1949. He is also one of the co-editors of the five-volume “ Handbuch der Landwirtschaft ” published by the Berlin publisher Paul Parey from 1952 to 1954 . He was in charge of the “ Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau ” until old age . From 1963 to 1981 he published 34 volumes of this traditional agricultural journal. He could no longer finish the writing of his own memoirs he had begun.

Honors

• 1964 member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina zu Halle / S.
• 1965 Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of California, Berkeley
• 1976 honorary member of the Society for Crop Science
• 1982 Honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Giessen .

Fonts (selection)

• Morphological-physiological investigations on the transpiration conditions in the genus Triticum and their use for plant breeding and crop ecology . Diss. TH Munich 1927. Zugl. in: Angewandte Botanik Vol. 9, 1927, pp. 199-281.
• About the wild sugar beet of Anatolia ... Habil. Schr. Phil. Fac. Univ. Giessen 1935. Zugl. in: Angewandte Botanik Vol. 16, 1934, pp. 305-349.
• Germans in the Hindu Kush. Report of the German Hindu Kush Expedition 1935 of the German Research Foundation . Published by Arnold Scheibe. Karl Siegismund Verlag Berlin 1937 = German research. Writings of the German Research Foundation, New Series, Vol. 1 (with 120 illustrations and 12 maps).
• Introduction to General Plant Breeding. Textbook for students of agriculture, horticulture and forestry as well as for breeding practice in 30 lectures . Publishing house Eugen Ulmer Ludwigsburg 1951.
• Legume growing . In: Handbuch der Landwirtschaft, 2nd ed., Vol. 2, Plant cultivation. Paul Parey Publishing House Berlin and Hamburg 1953, pp. 248-317.
• About the growth and decline of cultivated plants . Göttingen University Speeches No. 38. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1963.
• The importance of the scientific institutes for private plant breeding . Reports on Agriculture NF, 200th special issue. Publishing house Paul Parey Berlin and Hamburg 1987.

literature

• Eduard von Boguslawski : Arnold Scheibe 60 years old . In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft vol. 76, 1961, pp. 1382–1383.
• Wolfgang Böhm and M. Zoschke: Professor Arnold Scheibe on his 85th birthday . In: Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science Vol. 157, 1986, pp. 286-288 (with picture).
• Kord Baeumer : In memory of Arnold Scheibe 1901–1989 . In: Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science Vol. 163, 1989, pp. 143-144 (with picture).
• Wolfgang Böhm : A life for the cultivated plants. In memoriam Arnold Scheibe . In: Angewandte Botanik Vol. 63, 1989, pp. 185–203 (with picture and bibliography of his writings, including a list of the dissertations he prepared).
• Gerhard Röbbelen:  disc, Arnold Wilhelm Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 619 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Arnold Scheibe in the catalog of the German National Library
• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Arnold Scheibe at the IPNI