Erwin Chargaff

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Erwin Chargaff (born August 11, 1905 in Czernowitz , Bukowina , Austria-Hungary ; † June 20, 2002 in New York ) was an Austrian-American chemist and writer . As a scientist in the fields of biochemistry and genetic research, Chargaff made important contributions to the decoding of the structure of DNA . After his retirement in 1974 he made a name for himself as a science critic with stylistically polished, critical essays .

Life

Chargaff attended the Wasagasse grammar school in Vienna , where from 1923 he first briefly studied philology , but soon studied chemistry at the technical university there. (At the time he was also an admirer of Karl Kraus , the incorruptible critic of his time.) In 1928 he completed his chemistry studies with a doctorate . His doctoral supervisor was Fritz Feigl .

With a scholarship he went as a Fellow at the Yale University in the United States and operationally there research on the lipids of the tuberculosis bacterium . In 1930 he returned to Europe and continued this research as an assistant for chemistry at the Hygiene Institute of the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . There he also worked on his habilitation thesis until 1933 .

Chargaff came from a Jewish family. Therefore, he left Germany in 1933 after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists and moved to Paris at the Pasteur Institute . In 1935 he emigrated to the USA and worked at Columbia University in New York , where he taught and researched as an assistant professor from 1938 and as a professor of biochemistry from 1952 .

After his retirement in 1974, he increasingly appeared in public with literary works. His estate is in the German Literature Archive in Marbach and in Philadelphia.

The researcher

Erwin Chargaff established the Chargaff rules named after him : After he had established in the second half of the 1940s that the bases adenine and thymine, as well as cytosine and guanine , discovered by Albrecht Kossel, were always at the same molar level in the DNA of every living being examined Ratio (1: 1) occur, he formulated the rule that these bases always appear in pairs. Chargaff thus made an important contribution to research into DNA. His work helped James Watson and Francis Crick make the groundbreaking discovery that DNA is arranged as a spiral in the double helix structure. When the Nobel Prize was awarded for it in 1962, Chargaff was not considered.

Chargaff himself had not taken Crick and Watson seriously at first, as they did not have significant knowledge of chemistry. In a conversation with Chargaff, Crick forgot important molecular structures, and Watson made inappropriate comments in the same conversation, which betrayed his ignorance in the field of chemistry. Chargaff then called the young colleagues "scientific clowns".

The Chargaff's rules

See: Chargaff rules

  1. The base composition of DNA varies from species to species. The DNA of each species consists only of the four “basic nucleotides” dAMP, dCMP, dGMP and dTMP in different arrangements.
  2. DNA samples from different tissues of an individual are the same.
  3. The base composition of the DNA of a species is independent of age, nutritional status and habitat.
  4. In all DNA molecules: A = T and C = G and A + G = T + C.

The writer

As an author, Chargaff cultivated the form of the essay. He followed up on Karl Kraus , whose lectures he had attended while studying in Vienna. In his essays, Chargaff dealt critically with social, political and cultural phenomena, but especially with current science, and above all with his own long-standing subject, genetic research.

Works (in German)

All of the translations listed here have been published by Klett-Cotta Verlag , Stuttgart.

Awards and memberships

Obituaries

  • Lothar Jaenicke : The torch of Erwin Chargaff and the fire of Heraclitus eat their children. Angewandte Chemie 114, 2002, pp. 4387-4390.
  • Lothar Jaenicke: A fighter with the specialists. Nachrichten aus der Chemie 50, 2002, pp. 1228-1231.

literature

  • Doris Weber: Against the genre intoxication. A meeting of the century . Publik-Forum , Oberursel 1999, ISBN 3-88095-101-2 .
  • Ingeborg Harms : Our genes lie in words. Erwin Chargaff and the ingenuity of the skeptic . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 11, 1999.
  • Walter Kappacher : Clairvoyants are often visionaries. Memories of Erwin Chargaff . Keicher, Warmbronn 2007, ISBN 978-3-938743-52-2 .
  • Henner Reitmeier: At an acute angle to the world . A portrait. In: Die Brücke 151, 2/2009.
  • Gerhard Oberkofler: Erwin Chargaff and his Vienna. A couple of side notes on his hundredth birthday. Announcements from the Alfred Klahr Society No. 2/2005, pp. 11–18.
  • Friederike Migneco : "Whoever manipulates people kills humanity": Erwin Chargaff's predictions are overtaken by development , The Control Room. -Luxembourg. -Year [63] (2011), n ​​° 4 = n ° 2318 (January 27th)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Erwin Chargaff at academictree.org, accessed on 28 January 2018th
  2. ↑ Biography at www.encyclopedia.com accessed on January 12, 2013
  3. ↑ Member History: Erwin Chargaff. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 17, 2018 .
  4. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  5. ↑ Here also online nachlesbar, accessed 20 June 2012
  6. ↑ https://az.lu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=ALEPH_LUX01001016669&context=L&vid=BIBNET&lang=fr_FR&search_scope=All_content&adaptor=Local%20%20Search%20Engine&tab=all_content&query=gaffsby = 20

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Chargaff, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American chemist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Chernivtsi , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 2002
Place of death New York City , USA