Fabius Gross

Fabius Gross (born August 5, 1906 in Krosno ; June 18, 1950 in Edinburgh ) was an Austrian marine biologist .

Life and activity

Education and early career

After attending the elementary school in Krosno and the Federal Realschule in Vienna , where he obtained his school-leaving certificate in June 1923, Gross studied for two semesters at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna . He passed the supplementary examination in Latin and philosophical propaedeutics. He then studied from 1925 to 1929 zoology, botany and philosophy at the same university. His teachers included Hans Leo Przibram , Fritz von Wettstein and Jan Versluys .

Gross submitted his dissertation in 1929. This dealt with the swimming movement of the Cladocera (a flea hard), which he had examined on a microscopic level with the aid of slow-motion recordings of processes. She was looked after by Otto Storch and received the grade summa cum laude . At this time he also supported Storch in his studies on the biology of the dragonfly .

From April 1929 Gross worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin: first as a scholarship holder of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft , later as an assistant in Max Hartmann's department . In the next period he carried out research on lower marine animals , focusing on the variability and cytology of Artemia (a type of cancer) and the investigation of the haplo-genotypic sexuality of Noctiluca (flagellates, which cause the sea glow), which he himself had discovered, specialized.

Career after emigrating to Great Britain (1933 to 1950)

In the wake of the National Socialists' rise to power , Gross was dismissed from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on September 30, 1933, due to his Jewish descent - and despite the advocacy of his superiors - in accordance with the provisions of the Professional Civil Service Act.

In the autumn of 1933 Gross emigrated to Great Britain. Thanks to a scholarship from the Academic Assistance Council (and with additional support from the Jacobsson Fund) he was initially employed there at King's College in London, where he was employed in the institute of Julian Huxley . In September he moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Plymouth, where he was the assistant to Edgar Johnson Allen (1866-1942). He made a name for himself at this time with a well-received monograph on the moving and floating marine diatoms.

1937 Gross received a position as a lecturer (lecturer) for experimental zoology at the University of Edinburgh .

After the outbreak of World War II, Gross was interned as a formal member of an enemy power in August 1940 and briefly brought to Canada. Because of the advocacy of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning , he was released in October 1940 and was able to return to Scotland and continue his work at the university.

In Germany, Gross was meanwhile classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist repression organs and placed on the so-called special wanted list by the Reich Main Security Office in the spring of 1940 , a directory of people who in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British island by the German Wehrmacht automatically and primarily from special commandos the SS should be located and arrested.

In the first years after the war, Gross devoted himself to the task of increasing the reproduction rate of fish in Scottish lochs , prompted by the food shortages at that time, in order to bring about an increase in fishable stocks. He was ultimately successful in this area by spreading inorganic chemical fertilizers ( superphosphate , sodium nitrate and ammonium sulphate ) in the waters concerned: With this method he was able to increase the fish stocks in the lochs in question in a calculable manner and thus in a reliable manner a larger supply of edible Generate fish.

In November 1947, Gross was proposed by his old mentor Max Hartmann as head of the fisheries department in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Marine Biology in Wilhelmshaven , which was then being established . In the end, the appointment did not materialize, but in July 1948 he was appointed an External Scientific Member of the Institute and thus a member of the Max Planck Society .

On March 7, 1949, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In October 1949, Gross was appointed head of the Marine Biological Station at the University of Wales on the Welsh coast near Bangor, which was then under construction . Soon after, he fell ill with leukemia , from which he died in 1950. His successor as head of the marine biological research station in Bangor was Dennis Crisp .

On June 19 he was buried according to the Jewish rite.

family

In 1932 Gross married his wife Grete. The marriage resulted in two sons (* 1933 and 1936).

Fonts

• Analysis of the swimming motion of some Cladoceras based on micro slow-motion recordings , 1929.
• Studies on the polyploidy and the variability in Artemia salina , in: Naturwissenschaften . 20, pp. 962-967
• Odonata (Pseudoneuroptera): Dragonflies , 1930.
• The Life History of Some Marine Plankton Diatoms , 1937.
• Large-scale Plankton Cultures , 1939. (together with Hans Pettersson and Friedrich Koczy)
• Food Production by Fish and Oyster Farming , in: Nature , Vol. 148, 1941, p. 71.
• Photometric Measurements of the Growth of Phytoplakton , 1946. (together with Friedrich F. Koczy)
• Investigations on Marine Plankton and Fish Culture , 1947.
• A Fish Cultivation Experiment in the Arm of Sea-loch , 1950.

literature

• Lothar Jaenicke: Fabius Gross (1906–1950). From plankton to oysters and salmon. A marine biologist who almost fell out of history , in: Lothar Jaenicke: Profiles der Zellbiologie. 36 portraits from German history , Hirzel, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-7776-1693-3 , pp. 228-235.
• Royal Society of Edinburgh Year Book , 1951, p. 25. (obituary)
• Reinhard Rürup : Fabius Gross, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin-Dahlem . in: Fates and Careers. Memorial book for the researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89244-797-9 , pp. 208-210f.
• James Ritchie: Obituary for Gross . in: Nature . August 19, 1950, p. 295.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fabius Gross in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Fabius Gross on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).
2. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 13, 2019 .