Karl Günther Zimmer

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Karl Günther Zimmer (born July 12, 1911 in Breslau ; † February 29, 1988 in Karlsruhe ) was a German physicist (especially biophysicist ) and inventor . Together with Max Delbrück and Nikolai Timofejew-Ressowski, he was the author of the 1935 " three-man work " "On the nature of gene mutation and gene structure", which was initially little noticed .

Life

His parents were the Ministerialamtmann Arthur Zimmer and his wife Elsa, b. Geipel. In his childhood the family moved to Berlin and he attended the Helmholtz-Realgymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg. Zimmer studied physics, chemistry and philosophy at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin from May 1929 to May 1933 . After completing his studies, he worked in the genetic department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch from 1934 to 1945. He worked on radiation genetic problems, such as the generation of chromosome mutations by X-rays . From 1945 to 1955 he had to work on the Soviet nuclear program in Russia. After 1945 he was also a private lecturer in Hamburg and Stockholm. Zimmer was a member of Working Group IV / 4 Radiation Biology of the German Atomic Energy Commission, founded on December 21, 1955, and carried out radiation genetic experiments on Drosophila and (according to Klee) "secret war missions for the Air Force and Army". From 1957 he headed the Institute for Radiation Biology at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and was full professor for Radiation Biology at the University of Heidelberg from 1957 to 1979 . Zimmer was married to Elisabeth Charlotte Cron (1917-2003) since 1940. He died of a heart attack in Karlsruhe.

He found his final resting place after a reburial in 1990 in the grave of his parents in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf .

Publications (selection)

  • June 1935: On the nature of gene mutation and gene structure , (in collaboration with the geneticist Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timoféeff-Ressovsky (1900–1981) and the theoretical physicist Max Delbrück )
  • 1937: Monograph on the nature, generation and biological effects of rays
  • 1947: The hit principle in biology (in collaboration with Timoféeff-Ressovsky)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , p. 177 f.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, pp. 195 and 269.
  3. ↑ Thomas Marin: A turbulent research life - grave of the physicist and radiation biologist Karl Günther Zimmer discovered in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf , Märkische Allgemeine from March 3, 2013, accessed on August 1, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Zimmer, Karl Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 1988
Place of death Karlsruhe