Wolfgang Friedrich Gutmann

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Wolfgang Friedrich Gutmann (born May 13, 1935 ; † April 15, 1997 ) was a German biologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main . He was the founder of what he and those around him called the Frankfurt theory of evolution .

Vita

After graduating from the Helmholtz School , Gutmann studied biology in Frankfurt am Main with a focus on zoology, paleontology, chemistry and philosophy. He received his doctorate in 1961 under Wilhelm Schäfer with the thesis "Functional morphology of Balanus balanoides " for Dr. phil. nat. He carried out his other work as a DFG fellow in Wilhelmshaven near Senckenberg am Meer . In 1964 he came to Frankfurt am Main and took over the re-established Section for Functional and Comparative Anatomy at the Senckenberg Research Institute. Its old comparative anatomical and embryological collection had not been occupied by a scientist for decades. Gutmann devoted himself on the one hand to processing the collection and on the other hand worked intensively on functional morphological issues. In 1978 he completed his habilitation at the Faculty of Biology at the University of Frankfurt , which in 1984 also made him honorary professor.

Research approach

Gutmann's research focus was on the comparative anatomical and histological treatment of the animal kingdom. He was particularly interested in the functional relationship between the various groups of organisms, primarily on the level of the construction plans ( phyla ). In his search for a common basic principle of life and evolution, he came across the aspect of the hydraulic skeleton early on. He recognized this as a fundamentally new way of interpreting the structure and function of organisms and developed this according to the methods of construction morphology , which became the basis of the Frankfurt theory of evolution .

Services

Gutmann was one of the first biologists to recognize the structural and fundamental functional importance of fluid-filled cavities in the body structure of animal organisms. With the formulation of the hydroskeleton theory at the beginning of the 1970s, a detailed rejection of the so-called archicoelomatics theory , which was strongly propagated in the 1960s and 1970s, according to which a group of marine invertebrates no longer regarded as a monophyletic taxon should represent basal bilateria , followed in the early 1970s . The reconstructions and derivations by Gutmann, which ran in the opposite direction of interpretation, were later confirmed in principle by molecular genetic relationships analyzes. Gutmann's reconstructions would prove to be particularly correct if the assumption of a segmented Urbilaterier, sometimes postulated on the basis of comparative developmental genetic data, were correct. But the gallertoid theory developed by Gutmann and co-workers, according to which the ancient animals already had an extracellular matrix consisting of collagen , is much more recognized today than at the time of its creation, since there is now consensus among zoologists that the earliest metazoa for the formation of a collagen Matrix enabled.

For his scientific achievements, the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research awarded him the Cretzschmar Medal posthumously in 1998 , its highest scientific award. This was to recognize his special achievement for having broken new ground in morphology and evolutionary biology.

Aftermath

Gutmann's empirical and theoretical approach started as the " hydroskeleton theory ", then developed into the " critical evolution theory " and, since the late 1980s, into the " Frankfurt evolution theory ". The three theories and the associated implications, which were once heatedly and controversially discussed in Frankfurt and at some scientific symposia in Germany, have in fact not been accepted by the life science community ; internationally they never played a role. However, they retain their retrospective significance as a critical and dynamic research period in German scientific history.

Fonts (selection)

Essays
  • The hydroskeleton theory. In: Essays and speeches of the Senckenbergische Naturforschenden Gesellschaft , Vol. 21 (1972), pp. 1-91, ISSN  0341-4094 .
  • From the hydroskeleton to the skeletal muscle system. A biotechnologically based evolution study. In: Communications from the Institute for Light Surface Structures at the University of Stuttgart (IL) , Vol. 4 (1972), pp. 16–38.
  • Brachiopods. Biomechanical interdependences governing their origin and phylogeny. In: Science , Vol. 199 (1978), pp. 890-893, ISSN  0036-8075 (together with Klaus Vogel and Holger Zorn) doi : 10.1126 / science.199.4331.890
Monographs
  • The evolution of hydraulic design. Organismic change instead of old Darwinian adaptation ( Senckenberg book ). 201 S. Kramer, Frankfurt / M. 1989, ISBN 3-7829-1112-1 .
  • Critical Theory of Evolution. A contribution to overcoming old Darwinian dogmas. 227 pp., Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1981, ISBN 3-8067-0874-6 (together with Klaus Bonik).

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ WF Gutmann: Die Hydroskelett-Theory , pp. 1–91.
  2. ↑ WF Gutmann: From the hydroskeleton to the skeletal muscle system , pp. 16–38.
  3. ↑ Balavoine, G., Adoutte, A. (2003): The segmented Urbilateria: a testable scenario. Integrative and Comparative Biology 43: 137-147
  4. ↑ Rieger, R., Weyrer, S. (1998): The evolution of the lower metazoa: evidence from the phenotype. Progress in Molecular and Subcellular Biology 21: 21-43
personal data
SURNAME Gutmann, Wolfgang Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German evolutionary biologist, founder of the Frankfurt evolution theory
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1935
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1997