Helmut Böhme (agricultural scientist)

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Helmut Böhme (born  June 7, 1929 in Halle (Saale) ; †  January 3, 2015 in Aschersleben ) was a German agricultural scientist and geneticist . From 1967 he was Professor of Genetics at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and from 1969 to 1983 director of the Central Institute for Genetics and Crop Plant Research . In recognition of his scientific work, he was accepted into the Leopoldina and awarded the GDR National Prize.

Life

Helmut Böhme was born in Halle in 1929 as the son of an employee. He attended elementary school from 1936 to 1944 and then began an agricultural training, which he continued after the end of the Second World War and graduated in 1948 as an agricultural assistant. In parallel, he attended from 1945, the upper secondary school and acquired 1947 the High School .

He then studied agriculture from 1948 to 1951 at the University of Halle-Wittenberg , graduating as a qualified farmer. From 1951 to 1954 he was an aspirant with Hans Stubbe at the Institute for Genetics at the University and at the Gatersleben Institute for Crop Plant Research of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW), later the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (AdW). For a short time he was an aspirant in Moscow and Leningrad in 1952/1953, but he broke off this training phase after three months because his own research concepts could not be continued under the verdict of the Lyssenko School .

In 1954 he was at the Department of Agriculture at the University of Halle-Wittenberg under the supervision of Hans Stubbe with a thesis on genetic importance of grafts doctorate . Six years later he was also in Halle with a thesis on "Studies on the spontaneous and induced mutability of Proteus mirabilis" habilitation .

From 1954 he worked as a research assistant at the Gatersleben Academy Institute. At the same time he took over the lecture "Introduction to Genetics" at the University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1958 to 1962 and from 1963 to 1967 the lecture "General Genetics" at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Leipzig. In 1967 he became head of department at the Academy Institute and in 1969 deputy director of the institute. In 1967 he was appointed professor of genetics at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and appointed professor at the German Academy of Sciences.

After Hans Stubbe retired at the Gatersleben Institute in 1969, Helmut Böhme succeeded him as director of the institute, which was transformed into the Central Institute for Genetics and Crop Plant Research in the same year . He headed the institute until 1983 and then worked there as a research assistant until his early retirement in 1990. His successor as director was Dieter Mettin . Helmut Böhme died in Aschersleben in 2015.

Böhme was married to the qualified farmer Helga Böhme and had two daughters.

Scientific work

Helmut Böhme's research activities concerned general genetics and bacterial genetics , in particular genetic aspects of DNA repair .

From 1954 to 1958 he carried out experimental work on the so-called "progressive genetics" by Lyssenko , in particular on vegetative hybridization with the statement published in 1954 and 1958 that based on his own research results as well as the results of Hans Stubbe and co-workers, the statements and claims of the Soviet geneticists of the Lysenko School cannot be reproduced under controlled conditions.

Böhme's diverse research results formed the basis for more than 90 specialist publications. He was also the editor and editor of several specialist journals, including from 1968 to 1980 as managing editor of "Molecular and General Genetics", from 1975 to 1990 as editor in charge of "Biologische Zentralblatt" and from 1967 co-editor and from 1983 to 1990 editor of the journal " The cultivated plant ”.

Memberships and honors

Publications

  • Investigations into the problem of the genetic significance of grafts between genotypically different plants. Dissertation, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Faculty of Agriculture, Halle (Saale) 1954.
  • KT Suchorukov, Helmut Böhme: Contributions to the physiology of plant resistance. (Translated from the Russian). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1958.
  • Investigations into the spontaneous and induced mutability of Proteus mirabilis. Habilitation thesis, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Faculty of Agriculture, Halle (Saale) 1960.
  • Contributions to the theory of descent. Volk und Wissen publishing house, Berlin 1964, 2nd edition 1966.
  • Contributions to genetics and ancestry theory. Verlag Volk und Wissen, Berlin 1976, 2nd edition 1978 (as editor).
  • Helmut Böhme, J. Schöneich (Ed.): Environmental mutagens. Proceedings of the 6th annual meeting of the Europ. Environmental Mutagen Soc., Gernrode (GDR), September 27 - October 1, 1976 / organized under the auspices of the Akad. D. Knowledge d. DDR by the Zentralinst. for genetics a. Crop research d. AdW d. GDR, Gatersleben. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1977.
  • Significance and influence of chemistry on the development of industrial production in agriculture. Lecture to the plenum of the AdW of the GDR on April 13, 1978. Academy of Sciences of the GDR: Session reports of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR / N / Mathematics, natural sciences, technology; Born 1978, No. 19. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • The gene - to the theory of the concept. Lecture in front of the biosciences class of the GDR AdW on March 24, 1988. Academy of Sciences of the GDR: reports from the Academy of Sciences of the GDR / N / Mathematics, natural sciences, technology; Born in 1989, No. 8. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 978-3-05-500531-2 .
  • Helmut Böhme, Wolfgang Küttler , Friedhilde Krause (eds.): The Berlin Academy from 1950 to 1972. 2nd Colloquium of the Leibniz Society on the Berlin Academy History. Berlin, Trafo-Verlag 1999, ISBN 978-3-89626-209-7 .

literature

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