Siegfried Strugger

Siegfried Strugger (born April 9, 1906 in Völkermarkt (Carinthia), † September 11, 1961 ) was an Austrian botanist and pioneer of modern cell physiology.

Career

Strugger studied biology in Graz. His most influential teacher there was Friedl Weber , who introduced him to the emerging cell physiology. As a young scientist with a doctorate, Strugger went to Germany. He expanded his cytological training with Ernst Küster in Gießen and with Paul Metzner in Greifswald.

He was appointed to Jena by the botanist Otto Renner and experienced years of high productivity there.

In 1939 he took over the academic teaching post for botany at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover and 10 years later the professorship of botany at the University of Münster . Here he built a large new institute in place of the botany institute that had been destroyed in the war, and started a flourishing scientific school.

The scientific work

Friedl Weber conducted scientific research on the cytoplasm, while Strugger's pupil conducted the cell nucleus into mild, physico-chemical and colloid-chemical research methods. He was able to show the karyotin and the karyolymph differentiated by vital coloring. Strugger became a scientific leader from around 1936 in the field of vital staining. The suggestions received from Küster and Weber led to completely unexpected successes during his time in Jena. He established fluorescence microscopy in cell physiology research. With the fluorochrome dye acridine orange he developed and the dye rhodamine B, he had found biologically harmless vital dyes. In connection with the high-performance optics made available by the Zeiss works, Strugger was able to exhaust the methodological possibilities to the limit of what was achievable. He was able to selectively color chlorophyll grains without losing their ability to assimilate CO2.

Strugger carried out plastid research for many years. He extended the structural analysis, which was previously restricted to adult chloroplasts, to young plastids of the growing plant zones, thus combining cytomorphological and physiological studies of different developmental stages. He was able to finally rehabilitate AFW Schimper's theory of the continuity of the plastids and thereby made today's endosymbiont theory possible .

Strugger was one of the first research centers in Germany to introduce and set up electron microscopy in Münster. In addition to some new scientific successes, he made a scientific error here, which he could no longer correct himself because of his serious illness, which had occurred in 1959: He interpreted the plasma components known today as ribosomes as cross-sectional images of screwy structures, the so-called "cytonemata". This has not caused any permanent damage to science; conversely, his intrepid pioneering work in other fields had advanced research.

Honors

From 1950 to 1952 Strugger headed the Dean's Office and Rector's Office at the University of Münster. Strugger received many honors. He was an honorary citizen of the Technical University of Hanover, honorary senator of the Spanish Research Council, corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , honorary member of the natural science associations for Styria and Carinthia. The effects of his fluorochrome studies in medicine led to the award of an honorary doctorate by the medical faculty of Münster.

Siegfried Strugger died on December 11, 1961 at the age of 56 after a serious larynx disease.

Web links

• Karl Höfer: Siegfried Strugger (Austrian Zoological and Botanical Society)

predecessor	Office	successor
Franz Beckmann	Rector of the University of Münster 1951–1952	Karl Heinrich Rengstorf