Klaus Ammann (botanist)

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Klaus Ammann (born December 6, 1940 in Bern ) is a Swiss botanist and emeritus university professor. He particularly excelled in research with and on lichens (chemotaxonomy of microflora), in biomonitoring and in risk assessment of vertical gene flow in Europe.

Life

When Ammann was 23 years old, his birth father died. Ammann studied at the University of Bern and in the course of this also conducted research at the University of Bergen in Norway in 1966 , before completing his dissertation on the history of vegetation and glaciers in the Alps with Max Welten in 1972 with summa cum laude . As a result, he worked as a research assistant at the university, including compiling the Swiss atlas for plant distribution, and he founded the country's first research group for lichenology . Another year of research followed in 1975 at Duke University in North Carolina and from 1976 Ammann was a lecturer in biodiversity and vegetation ecology at the geobotanical institute of the University of Bern. In 1992 he traveled to Jamaica for research at the University of the West Indies and four years later, in 1996, he was appointed director of the Bern Botanical Garden , which is part of the university. At the age of 59 he was honored as an honorary professor in Bern in 2000 and in 2003 took a sabbatical at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis . He held the position of gardening director as well as his professorship until his retirement and retirement on February 28, 2006.

Subsequently, the botanist worked for two years as a guest lecturer in the working group “Biotechnology and Society” at the Technical University of Delft from 2006 to 2008 , gave a guest lecture at the Sabancı University in Istanbul in 2009 and gave a lecture at the ETH Zurich on the possibilities of Biomonitoring in the study of air pollution.

From 1995 to 2007 Ammann was a member of the Committee for Biosafety of the Swiss Government, Chairman of the European Group of Plant Specialists, the Swiss delegation to an EU project to investigate the gene flow of cruciferous plants in Europe, and a member of the Committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources for Planta Europa and 2002 board member of Planta Europa, from 1998 to 2004 chairman of the Expert Committee on Plant Conservation of the Council of Europe and also involved in drawing up the Red List of Endangered Species for the European area. Born in Bern, he was a member of the Federal Expert Commission for Biosafety (EFBS) and a member of the Swiss National Fund. He also worked on the Finnish Atlas Florae Europaeae Helsinki and the Greek Caryological Data Base Patras.

Position on genetic engineering

“I am neither an advocate of genetic engineering nor an opponent of organic production. But I call for biotechnology and organic farmers to come together. The trench warfare is useless. "

- Klaus Ammann on June 29, 2006 at a panel discussion at ETH Zurich as part of the lecture series "Poverty"

Ammann sees genetic engineering and, above all, biotechnology as a great opportunity for more ecological agriculture and is of the opinion that the previous methods of normal agriculture would cause massive damage to the prevailing biodiversity . The medium-term goal must be to be able to supply mankind with enough food, which is why more and more plants that are intended as food must be planted in ever smaller spaces and, at the same time, an almost equally important task must try to maintain the greatest possible biodiversity. In his opinion, the best and most efficient way to do this is through biotechnology. He repeatedly pointed out in the past that in all his years of research he had not seen a study that provided evidence of a permanent negative impact on biodiversity from genetically modified fruits. The Swiss criticized the camp thinking in the corresponding discussions and speaks in this context of "life science tie-boys" on the one hand and "progress disaffected who drive through life with the rearview mirror" on the other. In 2003, however, he predicted that the fronts would break up within ten years. To defend his position, Ammann also appeared in a promotional video for the herbicide and genetically modified seed company Monsanto in 2006 . He was also invited to speak at numerous international conferences.

Klaus Ammann is often reprimanded by his critics for working closely with genetically engineered companies and for having some of his research work financed by them. His activities in various institutes that are regarded as lobby organizations is also part of the criticism. In 1992 he founded the International Society Biotechnology Research (ISBR) and in 1998 the scientific group for green genetic engineering followed. He is also a board member of the Public Research Regulation Initiative (PRRI) and active in its working groups “Public Sector Research” and “Future Issues”. From 2002 to 2005 he worked for the United Nations Organization for Industrial Development in both the Global Initiative on Education in Biotechnology and the Compendium on Risk Assessment Research. He is Chairman of the Section for Biodiversity of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB), was a member of the Green Genetic Engineering Commission of the Academies of Sciences, and from 1999 to 2004 he was in the “Risk assessment on transgenic crops” group of the Assessment of the Impacts of Genetically Modified project Plants (AIGM), where he was also a board member. In addition, between 2004 and 2006 he worked as a board member at Africa Hervest, an organization that aims to accelerate the introduction of genetically modified organisms in Africa.

Fonts

Klaus Ammann has made numerous publications since his student days, which are reproduced in the following lists:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Old ditches newly dug" in ethz.ch ( ETH Zurich ). Accessed December 28, 2009 (German)
  2. ↑ Horst Wackerbarth: The Red Couch . Gruner + Jahr , Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 3-570-19429-9 , page 121
  3. ↑ "Conversations about plant biotechnology. Discussions with farmers and experts around the world: Dr. Klaus Ammann " ( Memento from October 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved on December 28, 2009 (English)
  4. ↑ Introduction of Klaus Ammann ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in gen-ethisches-netzwerk.de . Accessed December 28, 2009 (German) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gen-ethisches-netzwerk.de
personal data
SURNAME Ammann, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss botanist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern , Switzerland