Richard Goldschmidt

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Richard Baruch-Benedikt Goldschmidt (born April 12, 1878 in Frankfurt am Main , † April 24, 1958 in Berkeley , California / USA ) was a German biologist and geneticist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Goldschm. ".

Live and act

Richard Goldschmidt was the son of a Frankfurt merchant and also attended the Goethe grammar school there . In 1899 he graduated from high school and initially studied medicine and zoology at the University of Heidelberg with Otto Bütschli and Carl Gegenbaur . Goldschmidt then studied with Richard Hertwig at the University of Munich , where he completed his dissertation. In 1902 he was awarded a doctorate by Otto Bütschli in Heidelberg. phil. PhD. Then he worked again at Richard Hertwig as an assistant in Munich. In 1904 he completed his habilitation in zoology with a thesis on the karyokinesis of the chromidia of protozoa .

On March 15, 1906, Goldschmidt married Else Kühnlein (1882–1967) after a two-and-a-half year engagement. In 1906 and 1907 the two children Ruth and Hans were born.

In 1906 Goldschmidt was elected a member of the Leopoldina , in 1909 he became an associate professor at the University of Munich.

1914 Goldschmidt was for Berlin to the in Dahlem newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for biologist as head of genetics called the animals; In 1919 he became the second director of the institute. His colleague responsible for plants was Carl Correns , one of the three rediscoverers of the Mendelian rules . There he worked closely with Max Hartmann , Otto Meyerhof , Carl Neuberg and Otto Warburg, among others . The hereditary biologist Günther Just was one of his assistants from 1920 to 1923 .

In 1914, Goldschmidt was unable to return to Germany after studying in Japan because of the war - and ended up in the USA this way. He used the involuntary stay for studies. The increased engagement of the USA on the side of the Allies meant that the own population also had to be convinced: The result was the imprisonment of "dangerous Germans" living in the USA. Goldschmidt was also arrested in May 1918. After the armistice at the end of 1918, he was quickly released and returned to Germany in July 1919 (Goldschmidt, 1963, p. 174ff). In 1925 he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In 1935 Goldschmidt was expatriated by the National Socialists because of his Jewish descent and emigrated to the USA. There he was appointed professor of genetics and cytology at the University of California, Berkeley in the same year . In 1947 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . Since 1950 he was a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

research

How the term intersex / intersexuality was coined.

After doing developmental physiological research with Richard Hertwig, he turned to genetic physiology and derived a general theory of sex determination from studies on butterflies ( Lymantria dispar ). As a result of this research, Goldschmidt coined the term ' intersexuality ', which is recognized today in medicine and sociology , in October 1915 .

Goldschmidt also discovered, among other things, the fact that the cell count in nematodes in Caenorhabditis is constant ; he worked on the development and healing of stress expression in Drosophila .

He took over the idea of genes as macromolecules , suggested by Hermann Staudinger , very early on and based on it a physiological theory of inheritance , which, however, still assumed proteins (instead of nucleic acids ) as the sole building blocks of genes, but which in principle came very close to today's ideas. Goldschmidt was thus also one of the pioneers of neo-Darwinism .

Goldschmidt proposed a model of macroevolution based on macromutations that came to be known as the Hopeful Monster Hypothesis . This model was predominantly rejected from the ranks of neo-Darwinism because it contradicts the gradualism , which is usually regarded as a basis of Darwinism, because of the assumption of a volatile evolution . Some researchers, e.g. B. Günter Theißen , however, see it as an opportunity to explain major innovations and new construction plans in evolution.

Publications (selection)

  • Introduction to the Science of Life or Ascaris. (= Understandable Science. Volume 3/4). Springer-Verlag, Berlin etc.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helga Satzinger (2010): Difference and Heredity: Gender Orders in Genetics and Hormone Research 1890–1950. P. 175
  2. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995 (= Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3; also dissertation Würzburg 1995), ISBN 3-88479-932-0 , p. 146 f. and 156.
  3. ^ Richard Goldschmidt obituary at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).
  4. ↑ Richard Goldschmidt: Preliminary communication on further attempts to inherit and determine gender . In: Biological Centralblatt . tape 35 . Publisher Georg Thieme, Leipzig, p. 565-570 ( archive.org ).
  5. ↑ Stephen J. Gould (1977). "The Return of Hopeful Monsters." Natural History 86 (June / July): 24, 30.
  6. ↑ Günter Theissen (2006) The proper place of hopeful monsters in evolutionary biology. Theory Biosci. 124: 349-369.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Goldschmidt, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goldschmidt, Richard Baruch-Benedikt (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biologist and geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1958
Place of death Berkeley, California