Carsten Bresch

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Carsten Bresch (born September 5, 1921 in Berlin ; † March 1, 2020 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German physicist and geneticist and professor at the University of Freiburg .

Professional background

Carsten Bresch studied physics and was one of Max Delbrück's first students in 1947 in post-war Berlin. From 1949 he worked as an assistant at what was then the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Göttingen, where he introduced bacteriophages as a research object in German genetics. In 1958 Bresch von Göttingen went to the University of Cologne , where he prepared the establishment of a genetics institute on behalf of Max Delbrück and the botany professor Joseph Straub . After completion, the researchers Max Delbrück, Walter Harm , Peter Starlinger and the biochemist Hans Georg Zachau and later the nucleic acid chemist Ulf Henning moved into the research space alongside Bresch .

In 1964 Bresch was offered a chair for genetics at the University of Freiburg , where he had to set up his own institute in connection with the restructuring of the Faculty of Biology. Since this involved extensive new buildings, he and his colleague Rainer Hertel worked temporarily in the USA at the Biology Division of the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (SCAS) in Dallas , Texas , which he had been appointed head of.

From 1968 Bresch was then in Freiburg, where he held the chair for genetics at the university within the Institute for Biology III. At the same time he was head of the central laboratory for mutagenicity testing of the German Research Foundation .

His main scientific field of work was the genetics of bacteriophages . Bresch was the author of the work that has been considered the international standard textbook in genetics for many years: Classical and Molecular Genetics . In addition to his research and university teaching activities, Carsten Bresch was intensively involved in interdisciplinary theological and scientific discussions.

Act

It was Bresch's great merit in research, together with his cousin Thomas Trautner at the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Göttingen, to have introduced bacteriophages as research objects in genetics and molecular biology.

In the early stages of molecular biology , two schools with different philosophical orientations faced each other: The name “molecular biology” was coined in 1952 by the British molecular biologist William Astbury , a supporter of the structurally oriented school, who referred to the structure of large biological molecules.

Like his teacher Max Delbrück, Carsten Bresch belonged to the information-oriented school that emphasized the nature of the information process in genetics. In the 1930s, Delbrück worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Niels Bohr on questions of genetic information theory and, as a physicist, had "mutated" into a biologist. Delbrück had come to the conclusion that biology was "too important to be left to biologists". Carsten Bresch followed this interdisciplinary approach of his teacher and developed it throughout his life - in his work Zwischenstufe Leben (see below) also ideologically.

Bresch was the author of the standard textbook Classical and Molecular Genetics, translated into several languages . His main ideological work, Zwischenstufe Leben , has been and will be discussed a lot . In this book, Bresch dared to make a large-scale attempt in natural philosophy to develop perspectives for the future of mankind from the presentation of reliable results from evolutionary research. He thought the evolutionary principle of “integration” consistently further down to the planetary level and sketched a “giant planetary being” in which all creatures are finally integrated: “All the patterns of our globe will then be connected to a huge 'intelligent organism' - to one single! To emphasize its singularity, we want to call such a structure a 'MONON'. ”Bresch derived all natural phenomena from astrophysics to the brain and human society from the unified basic principle of pattern and information growth and their increasing integration, whatever more highly integrated and thus more complex forms. According to him, development has three phases:

  1. that of matter,
  2. those of the living and
  3. those of the spiritual and of culture.

Having arrived at this level, Bresch asks the crucial questions for himself and for humanity, whether this evolution is a matter of chance and necessity, of an erroneous course or of the path towards a distant goal. Bresch leads his readers to the roots of ultimate questions. "The book is thus an important contribution to a new understanding of self and the world of today's people who are more perplexed than ever before when it comes to the question of the meaning of life."

Bresch's “Zwischenstufe Leben” represents a scientific representation of Teilhard de Chardin's strongly theologically oriented, universal concept of evolution. In his presentation, Bresch explicitly marks the point or the limit at which he transgresses a purely scientific description in favor of an ideological interpretation. He therefore in no way places himself in the position of an unauthorized, methodological border crossing between natural science on the one hand and religion or theology on the other.

Bresch was intensively involved in interdisciplinary scientific and theological conversations and discussions on the subject of evolution . In this environment, he founded the interdisciplinary working group AGEMUS together with the Freiburg theologian Helmut Riedlinger in 1981 from a theological-biological seminar group at the University of Freiburg and published the Freiburg AGEMUS circular of this working group. In November 2010 the Schattauer Verlag published his book "Evolution - What remains of God".

Carsten Bresch died on March 1, 2020 at the age of 98 in Freiburg.

Publications

As an author

As editor

  • AGEMUS. Newsletter: Working groups on evolution, future of humanity and questions of meaning. Freiburg 1981 to 1983.
  • Can one know God from nature? Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1990, ISBN 3-451-02125-0 .
  • Good and Evil in Evolution. Scientists, philosophers and theologians in dispute. S. Hirzel, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8047-1423-4 .

Various

  • 1974: On the problem of the phase change in evolution. In: Acta Teilhardiana 11, pp. 47-52.
  • 1978: Evolution - man as he is, as an intermediate stage: An interview with Prof. Carsten Bresch. In: Herder-Korrespondenz 32. pp. 286-293.
  • 1978: what is evolution? In: Böhme, Wolfgang (Ed.): Chance and Law of Life. Karlsruhe: Evangelical Academy Baden (Herrenalber Texte, Volume 9), pp. 11–33.
  • 1978: Evolution - questions of energy and information. In: Erdoel-Erdgas-Zeitschrift 94, pp. 349–356.
  • 1978: The end of biological evolution. In: Annual books of the Society for Natural History in Württemberg 133, pp. 5–13.
  • 1979: The Sadistic Carbon Atom: Review of Richard Dawkins. In: Biology in our time 9, pp. 30–32.
  • 1979: Humanity on the second threshold of evolution. In: Schatz, Oskar (ed.) Hope in the survival crisis. Graz: Styria (Salzburg Humanism Talks 9), pp. 44–61.
  • 1979: life. In: Seidler, Eduard (Hrsg.): Dictionary of basic medical terms. An introduction to medicine in 86 articles. Freiburg: Herder, pp. 184-186.
  • 1980: About the possibility of recognizing the meaning and goal of development. In: Schlemmer, Johannes (ed.): Belief as need. Contributions to the human self-image. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein.
  • 1980: Pattern and Evolution. In: Society for Classification e. V. (Ed.): Knowledge structures and organizational patterns. Proceedings of the 4th conference of the Society for Classification e. V. Salzburg from 16. – 19. April 1980. Frankfurt: Indeks Verlag. (Studies on Classification Volume 9), pp. 109–113.
  • 1981: Evolutionary causes and perspectives of the cultural crisis. In: Paus, Ansgar (ed.): Culture as a Christian mission today. Kevelaer: Butzon & Becker. Lectures of the Salzburg University Weeks, pp. 171–195.
  • 1981: The role of language in the overall picture of evolution. In: Nova Acta Leopoldina NF 54, pp. 747-752.
  • 1981: The monster among the paper tigers or the extraordinary scientific role of sociobiology. In: Schatz, Oskar (ed.): Do we need another science? Graz: Styria. (Salzburg Humanism Talks 10), pp. 173–180.
  • 1981: About throwing the dice, which wasn't a game of chance. In: Piper, Klaus (Ed.): Pleasure in thinking. A reading book from philosophy, natural and human sciences 1947–1981. Munich. Piper, pp. 25-34.
  • 1981: Sociobiology - Egoism around the corner? In. Agemus-Rundbrief, September 1981, pp. 11-20.
  • 1982: On the evolutionary foundation of pacifism. In: Agemus-Rundbrief, special issue 1982, pp. 3–10.
  • 1982: Obituary for Joachim Illies. In: Agemus-Rundbrief June 1982, pp. 25-26.
  • 1982: The dispute with Arthur E. Wilder-Smith. Creation and / or evolution. In: Agemus-Rundbriefe 1982–1984 as well as factum 1983–1985 and factum special edition 506.
  • 1983: Evolution from alpha conditions, random towers and system constraints. In: Riedl, Rupert J./Kreuzer, Franz (Hrsg.): Evolution and image of man. Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, pp. 22–39.
  • 1984: The end of biological evolution. In. Woman and Culture 87, No. 3, pp. 6-8.
  • 1985: Can We Become New People? On the evolutionary justification of pacifism. In: humans, nature, society. Journal for International Scientific and Cultural Understanding 2, pp. 30–33.
  • 1986: Evolution and belief in creation. In: Diakonia 17, pp. 230–240.
  • 1987: What is Evolution? In: Andersen, Svend / Peacocke, Arthur (eds.): Evolution and Creation. A European Perspective. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 36-57.
  • 1988: what is evolution? In: Wolfgang Böhme (Hrsg.): Evolution and Faith in God. A reading and workbook for the conversation between science and theology. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 31–54.
  • 1992: Evolution and xenophobia. In: Isak, Rainer (ed.): We and the strangers. Formation and reduction of fears. Freiburg: Catholic Academy of the Archdiocese of Freiburg.

literature

  • Werner Schuder (Ed.): Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar . Carsten Bresch. tape 1 . de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, ISBN 3-11-011754-1 .
  • Eckart Löhr: From Alpha to Omega. A conversation with the physicist, geneticist and evolutionary theorist Carsten Bresch . Deutscher Wissenschafts-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2015, ISBN 978-3-86888-093-9 .
  • Simone Wenkel: Molecular biology in Germany from 1945 to 1975. An international comparison. In: kups.ub.uni-koeln.de. Kölner UniversitätsPublikationsServer, 2013, accessed on May 12, 2020 (There comments on Carsten Bresch in relation to the structure of the Institute for Genetics at the University of Cologne).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karsten Voigt: The institute mourns Carsten Bresch. University of Freiburg im Breisgau, March 4, 2020, archived from the original on March 9, 2020 ; accessed on March 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Delbrück conducted research from 1961 to 1963 during his absence from the California Institute of Technology at the new Cologne institute and helped establish it.
  3. ↑ The SCAS is the predecessor of today's Molecular Biology Institute of the University of Texas in Dallas (UTD).
  4. ^ A b Carsten Bresch, Rudolf Hausmann: Classical and molecular genetics. Third, expanded edition. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1972, ISBN 3-540-05802-8 (Note: Rudolf Hausmann was co-author of this work from the second edition of 1970 onwards .)
  5. ↑ Thomas Trautner had been one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin since 1964 .
  6. ↑ The MPI for physical chemistry was headed by Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer , a brother of the resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was murdered by the Nazis in the concentration camp . Bresch probably came to the MPI in Göttingen on the recommendation of his teacher Max Delbrück, who was also a brother-in-law of Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer.
  7. ↑ Carsten Bresch: Intermediate stage life - evolution without a goal? R. Piper & Co. Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-492-02270-7 .
  8. ↑ Carsten Bresch: Intermediate stage life - evolution without a goal? Munich / Zurich 1977, p. 250.
  9. ↑ From the blurb by Bresch: Zwischenstufe Leben. R. Piper & Co. Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-492-02270-7 .
  10. ^ C. Bresch: intermediate stage life. P. 295, “Epilogue - Beyond Science”.
personal data
SURNAME Bresch, Carsten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist and geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 2020
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau