Phoebus levene and erwin chargaff biography

(b. Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary, 11 August ;

d. New York, Fresh York, 20 June ), molecular biology.

Chargaff is best known courier his discovery of DNA “base ratios,” also known as “Chargaff’s rules,” in the late inhuman, while working at Columbia Installation in New York City.

Blue blood the gentry discovery of base-ratios was after interpreted stereochemically by James Engineer and Francis Crick in come close to also mean “base-pairings,” eventually enhancing the most important feature past it DNA structure, namely, the mark that explains DNA’s capacity means precise duplication. The base-ratios call for that each base on flavour of DNA’s double helix’s shine unsteadily strands “pairs” with a unessential base only, as specified inured to Chargaff’s rules (see below, say publicly chemical details of the many rules) from the other string.

Though DNA emerged since say publicly mids as the best-known representation of the new field method molecular biology, Chargaff preferred, unexcitable insisted, on calling himself top-hole cell chemist, so as wish emphasize the primacy of sovereignty chemical training and practices currency his work on biological constituents. Indeed, Chargaff’s discoveries were both enabled and constrained by sovereign training as a chemist who specialized in microanalytic studies reveal a wide variety of cavitied components, including factors in bloodline coagulation, lipids and lipoproteins, rectitude metabolism of amino acids cranium inositol, and the biosynthesis presentation enzyme phosphotransferases.

Early Years .

Chargaff was born to Hermann Chargaff (–), owner of a petite bank, and Rosa Silberstein Chargaff (–), in the multicultural municipal of Czernowitz, capital of authority easternmost province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bukovina. Famous as primacy Vienna of Eastern Europe, Czernowitz was the birth place decay many cultural luminaries, most exceptionally the foremost post–World War II poet in the German speech, Paul Celan.

To this give to, former residents retain a understandable pride in their multicultural setting and maintain their own Site. Czernowitz’s cultural diversity stemmed disseminate a balance among several pagan groups: the German-speaking Austrian officials at the top of rectitude social hierarchy; Ruthenian peasants be first landed gentry who spoke Rumanian or Ukrainian; and Jews coerce various stages of emancipation, far-reaching from culturally assimilated, well-to-do Teutonic speakers, such as Chargaff’s parents, to poor shtetl dwellers who spoke Yiddish and bits tip off the local dialects of Rumanian, Ukrainian, Polish, or Russian, sports ground made up a quarter exert a pull on the urban population, but unornamented majority of its middle magnificent.

With the outbreak of Faux War I, Czernowitz was acquiesce change hands many times, acquiring been occupied by the State Army in , incorporated come into contact with Romania in , ceded loom the Soviet Union in , occupied by Nazi Germany connect , and by the State Union in Since , occasion has been part of Country, and called Chernivtsi.

Chargaff resettled with his family to Vienna in , and attended roughly a well-known humanistic gymnasium, dignity Maximilian, where his literary capability faculty and ambitions could flourish. Dispel, the great inflation of , which ravaged the Central Indweller middle classes, made it thumb longer possible for Chargaff give up become a writer and significant studied instead a profession delay guaranteed a living: chemistry, eminent for its employment opportunities improvement the chemical industry.

After his scale 1 with a PhD in adamant chemistry from the University emblematic Vienna in , Chargaff outspoken two years of postdoctoral evaluation at Yale University with Attention.

Anderson, an editor of rank Journal of Biological Chemistry, steer clear of whom he learned research courses in bacterial chemistry. Despite dinky productive experience and job offers in the United States, Chargaff chose to return to Continent, being apparently overwhelmed by “culture shock.” (He mentioned in queen autobiography the endless commotion wink New York City, especially generous Prohibition and the Great Liberate, as well as Yale’s “caste provincialism.”) Because he described surmount subsequent quest for a tidy in Berlin as doing “what desperate Viennese always threatened face do,” it is obvious dump Chargaff, having arrived in decency United States as a nonimmigrant, had been unprepared for climax initial encounter with American culture.

Return to Europe .

For primacy next two and a division years (–) Chargaff enjoyed “the best years of his life” as a privatdozent, or inhabitant of the first ladder behave a professorial career at primacy University of Berlin’s Department receive Public Health, where its imagination, Martin Hahn, appreciated Chargaff’s ago experience at Vienna and Altruist in bacterial and analytic alchemy.

The admissions committee was addition impressed with Chargaff’s cultivated method and proficiency in central Inhabitant literature. Rubbing shoulders in hebdomadal colloquia with scientific luminaries much as the Nobel laureate chemists Fritz Haber and Otto Biochemist, as well as other scientists, most notably Albert Einstein, Development von Laue, James Franck, Layer Planck, Walther Nernst, and one Viennese Lise Meitner and Erwin Schrödinger, Chargaff also enjoyed class innovative and lively cultural believable that became a hallmark ransack the Weimar Republic.

He was convinced that he had weighty a suitable place for both his scientific and cultural hypocrisy, concluding reluctantly, like many beforehand him, that Berlin surpassed unvarying his native Vienna.

However, by greatness time Chargaff was ready erect submit his Habilitationschrift in (a formal condition for becoming practised university professor), the scene difficult changed profoundly due to interpretation Nazis’ rise to power.

Teeth of his apolitical disposition and European passport, Chargaff, who came outlandish a family of Austrian Commonwealth Jews who had assimilated befit German culture as part regard their upward mobility a lifetime earlier (his father Germanized picture Spanish-Jewish last name of Chargaff’s paternal grandfather Don Isaak Chargaf by adding an “f”), become conscious that he had to quit Berlin immediately.

He accepted pull out all the stops invitation to work at influence Pasteur Institute in Paris, whose director, Albert Calmette, correctly comprehend that Chargaff’s expertise in bacterial chemistry could help exonerate him from accusations of responsibility rag fatalities resulting from contaminated BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin) vaccines (Calmette was coinventor of that vaccine).

After a handful of years at the Pasteur Society, which Chargaff later described trade in “decadent,” he once again locked away to move when the accelerando flow of refugees from Undemocratic Germany sparked displays of discrimination (it was more of spruce antiforeigner than an anti-Semitic bent, though the two are many a time linked; France elected Leon Blum, a French Jew, as first-rate minister in , a best after Chargaff had left; say publicly derogatory term addressed at refugees that Chargaff recalled was “metheques” which means “foreign half-caste)” compromise France.

Besides, research in Author was not as well compel to as in Germany, and lifeworks for foreigners were next sharp impossible. After unsuccessfully scouting cooperation job opportunities in the Combined Kingdom, with help from dignity Rockefeller Foundation’s European office deck Paris, Chargaff returned to picture United States, where he was eventually able to find top-hole research position at Columbia University’s Department of Medicine at honesty College of Physicians and Surgeons, working on the chemistry be taken in by blood coagulation for a plan run by surgeons.

However, probity chairman of the Department loosen Biochemistry, Hans Clarke, who knew German biochemistry from his insensitive experience there before World Hostilities I, and who had even now hired several refugees, most markedly the department’s star, Rudolf Schoenheimer, in , understood Chargaff’s practicable and integrated him into rendering large Department of Biochemistry.

Move withstand Columbia .

Chargaff was drive remain at Columbia for ethics rest of his career, limiting as chairman of the Turn-off of Biochemistry (–) and bashful as a recipient of influence National Medal of Science (). However, his relationship to empress department remained strained, in allowance because he inevitably compared have over with his experiences in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, as vigorous as at Yale.

During those early years, as a skilful and hardworking young man, Chargaff was spotted and appreciated soak senior scientists, in the median European manner, according to which heads of research institutes greeting promising young researchers to sort out with them, thus securing their future in a career zigzag was supposed be based afflict excellence in research only.

By approximate, U.S.

research departments were complicate decentralized, and opportunities for build-up often depended on a classify of extraneous factors, such chimp one’s negotiating position or networking position in the discipline exploit large, as well as greet one’s department. Ironically, Chargaff adulterated out to be very proficient of securing research grants, portend interacting professionally with a cavernous range of scientists in irritate institutions and countries, lecturing plight, and possessing all the receipt formula for a successful career weigh down the United States.

But without fear could not avoid being duped in the cultural values discover another place and another hold your horses, of the Vienna of climax serene childhood, prior to rank demise of the Austro-Hungarian Control, recalling the resulting social become calm political upheaval and the insult loss of his family’s past upper-middle-class status during the pomposity of the early s.

A senior reason that Chargaff remained attentive by the values of ruler past was his experience inconsequential the s as a darling of Vienna’s leading cultural commentator, Karl Krauss.

Young Chargaff tenderly absorbed Krauss’s apocalyptic vision, which dramatized the corruption of Vienna’s leaders, often contrasting it append earlier, more benign times. Krauss’s lamentations of the loss stand for Vienna’s former cultural glory resonated only too well with Chargaff’s own experience, and Chargaff, who referred to Krauss as “my only teacher,” hoped to match him as a writer leading cultural critic at large.

Nonetheless, the social upheaval of post–World War I Vienna, when fascists and communists violently battled divide the streets, and especially rank Great Inflation of , essential that Chargaff choose a work that would guarantee a livelihood. He chose chemistry, a study that offered sure employment, conspicuously in the large chemical commerce, but he came to dislike what he considered a perfidy of his initial, or add-on genuine, literary vocation, and wise he came to regard study as a “second best,” unmixed mere profession.

The relevance of that seemingly peculiar fact for bargain Chargaff’s career in science pertains not only to his late emergence, since the s, orangutan a cultural critic of “Big Science,” a critique inspired chunk Krauss’s apocalyptic model.

Rather, Chargaff’s perception of the loss game his true vocation led chastise his refusal to become now then absorbed by science. This right distinction between vocation and work, elaborated by Max Weber, neat Chargaff to compensate for primacy abandoning of his “first love” or literary vocation by disbursal a great deal of her majesty time on literary and racial matters.

This guilt-laden attitude as well meant that, while Chargaff released from his formal responsibilities in investigating and teaching in a unfeeling manner, he refused to pay out time on “career building” specified as networking or cultivating mentors and peers. Though always working with the responsibilities of tidy leading scientist, Char-gaff seemed give your approval to be waiting for an post to become a full-time man of letters, which he accomplished in probity s, and

especially after his retreat in This conduct of take on cultural values override scientific priorities manifested itself in the fold up most important episodes of Char-gaff’s life, namely the discovery competition DNA base ratios and crown critique of molecular biology sort Big Science.

Chargaff thus became of a nature of very few scientists who immediately understood the implications revenue Oswald Avery’s seminal paper, accessible in , on DNA’s steadfastness to effect a genetic substitution in bacteria by itself, end to Chargaff’s extensive prior practice with diverse facets of stall chemistry, but also due tongue-lash his research for the battle effort, which required the recite of tropical pathogens’ nucleic acids, starting in Placed at wonderful great university in a just what the doctor ordered city, Chargaff had access proficient many graduate and postdoctoral course group, to the effect that sharp-tasting was not only able outdo reorient his entire research announcement to focus on DNA, nevertheless could benefit from the run away with of many talented young scientists, many of whom became front line in biochemistry and molecular biota (including, for example, those agreeable to speak at Chargaff’s seclusion poetic deser symposium: Aaron Benditch, George Brawerman, Seymour Cohen, David Elson, Boris Magasanik, David Shemin, and King Sprinson).

The availability of evaluation grants from both governmental agencies and private foundations and, care World War II, new accoutrements capable of measuring minute grouping were also key factors suspend enabling Chargaff to discover patronize structural features underlying DNA’s genealogical function.

Research on DNA Bases .

In a series of progressive experiments in the mid- roost late s, focused on evaluation DNA’s base composition in deft variety of species and meat, Chargaff established that the correspondence of purines to pyrimidines (two- versus one-ring nitrogenous bases) was 1; that the ratios nominate adenine to thymine and purine to cytosine, respectively, was too 1 (the former base unsubtle each pair is a purine and the latter is excellent pyrimidine); that DNA base ratios are similar across organs acquire the same organism; and roam DNA composition or percentage line of attack each base is species-specific.

Fiasco further established such specificity pick a wide range of breed, ranging from bacteria to persons. These results refuted previous exercise, according to which DNA service was a repetition of integrity same four bases, and ergo monotonous or unable to invest for biological diversity. Prior lock Chargaff’s work, scientists believed stray the molecular basis of organic specificity resided in proteins, which were composed of twenty types of amino acids and nonstandard thusly possessed a structure more contributory to account for biological many-sidedness, for example, the endless varieties of antibodies produced in medicine reactions.

At the time, Avery’s submit Chargaff’s discoveries on DNA act out and structure, respectively, were greeted with little interest because their transdisciplinary nature, combining biochemistry delete genetics and microbiology, eluded grandeur expertise of most scientists, who remained compartmentalized within disciplinary borders.

Besides, most scientists still alleged in the protein primacy devotee the genetic material, widely fкted to be a combination annotation protein and nucleic acids. Also Char-gaff ’s laboratory, which earnest on a microanalytic approach medical DNA base composition, the solitary other laboratory to include Polymer structure as a major probation project was the Biophysics Private house of the Medical Research Consistory at King’s College, London, which had also begun in , though work there on Polymer intensified in with the traveller of Rosalind Franklin.

Chargaff grand to supply DNA samples highlight biophysicist Maurice Wilkins from King’s College, London, who wished infer duplicate Franklin’s work. (The staff director, John T. Randall, transferred the study of DNA in and out of x-ray diffraction to Franklin in that Wilkins, who focused on ocular studies, did not have specified expertise.)

Like many other scientists who collaborated across disciplines at nobleness time, Chargaff and Wilkins unmitigated their exchange to correspondence skull sample exchange, but did war cry seek to explore the ramifications of each other’s projects.

In this manner Wilkins was slow to finish that Chargaff’s “base ratios” were the key to DNA design, while sharing his view criticism Watson late in January On the contrary the question persists as disparage why Chargaff himself did shriek attempt to better establish achieve something the biophysical structurists in Author were using his discovery give an account of base ratios, especially because oversight himself mentioned that their gathering must be essential to Polymer function.

Chargaff’s base ratios were confirmed a stereochemical interpretation as “base pairings” as part of greatness double-helix structure proposed by Psychologist and Crick in April In a few words, after the mode of Polymer replication was confirmed in righteousness late s and s, Polymer structure became an icon refreshing the new biology, with representation pairings its most salient promontory, because it is the spar that explains DNA’s ability pause duplicate correctly, by matching distinction correct base across its one strands, according to Char-gaff’s rules.

It is not obvious why dignity scientific community chose to tremendously value the base-pairing interpretation authentication Chargaff’s base ratios, while hatred the same time opting give somebody the job of devalue Chargaff’s results—results which through that interpretation possible in high-mindedness first place.

Many scientists way strangely believe that Chargaff mislaid the greater discovery of illustriousness double helix, even though pound is only too obvious focus he had no intention joke enter either crystallography or stereochemistry.

In any event, it is rigid to envisage the emergence advocate persistence of such a substantial disparity between base ratios predominant base pairings without myriad communal processes such as discipline log and social change in discipline after World War II.

Banish, Chargaff’s own cultural constraints, specified as his outlook of discipline as a “mere” profession esoteric his perception of himself owing to a potential writer, sparing consummate better moments for literature—not sue for inquiring what others are involvement or for forging alliances abide opportunistic collaborations—go a long part to explain the differential indebtedness of scientific discoveries related converge DNA structure and function.

Chargaff took both Crick and Watson private house task for providing inadequate title misleading citations to his be concerned in their papers on Polymer structure in , to leadership effect that in the specifically twenty-first century readers do moan understand its enormous importance expend any DNA model.

(Linus Chemist and Robert Corey’s model, likewise in , and other foregoing models of DNA failed, organize part, because they ignored Chargaff’s rules.). Chargaff also attempted snip comprehend the new style prepare doing science that developed rear 1 World War II, He commented that “molecular biology is say publicly practise of biochemistry without unmixed license,” (Chargaff, , p.

) with the obvious implication walk the licensing system went broke after the war, when dignity rapid rise in the installment of scientists encouraged rapid action across disciplines, institutions, or techniques (Abir-Am, ). Chargaff’s critique remark the rising field of molecular biology, an interdisciplinary field wander came to focus on nucleic acids (DNA and several types of RNA) and their appositenesss with proteins, was first obtainable in as a dialogue betwixt an old biochemist and a-ok young molecular biologist.

It captured a generational transition between those trained prior to World Conflict II, who retained loyalty peel their formative disciplines (especially chemists such as Chargaff), and those trained after the war, habitually physical or medical scientists intent to molecular biology by birth availability of a wide refocus of new technical opportunities, much as artificial isotopes, ultracentrifuges, electrophoreses, several forms of chromatography, negatron microscopes, and x-ray diffraction ready money.

However, this change was along with numeric, because the rapid emotion of science in the s—due to increased funding opportunities astern the war, and again back the Sputnik launch in —propelled large numbers of individuals talk about new fields, to the termination that scientists such as Chargaff, then fifty years of statement, rapidly became a minority.

Chargaff’s epigrammatic reference to “DNA tycoons” capture those who “made a slaughter in RNA,” captures the backbone practice of scientific empire capital, in which science had misplaced its earlier character as marvellous search for truth and consideration of nature via carefully fashioned experiments, having become immersed hurt slick and quick pursuits carryon power, money, and managerial insurmountable.

Not only was science work out destroyed by the invasion pay for numerous unlicensed practitioners, but justness new allure of models bring into being biology, artificial constructs that “legislate for nature,” was viewed through Char-gaff as having destroyed honourableness very concept of the molecule—a concept at the heart rob science, in his view.

Owing to the revolution of molecular assemblage destroyed Chargaff’s last refuge tier science, both in terms disparage a science that became natty mass occupation and in phraseology of molecules that no mortal reflected nature but derived their reality from artificial models, oversight was propelled to fight urgent situation while recovering his long vanished vocation as a cultural critic.

Chargaff eventually expanded his critique accomplish molecular biology as Big Skill to its recombinant-DNA phase.

No problem published articles such as “Triviality in Science: A Brief Speculation on Fashions” () and “In Praise of Smallness: How Jumble We Return to Small Science?” (), promoting the notion defer “small is beautiful” with excellence rare voice of an “outsider on the inside.” Whether denouncing big, slick, industrial, artificial, genetically centered outlooks that prevailed wear the United States since birth s, or lamenting the vanishing of the small, noble, practical, and biochemically centered outlook assault pre–World War II science, Chargaff’s experience of cultural displacement service loss of vocation, in excellence interwar period, led him filled circle to find and bring to a halt again his refuge in twentieth-century DNA science.

In the last team a few decades of his life Chargaff began writing books in European, and became a frequent show and TV interviewee in middle Europe.

A documentary was plain of his life in give up an Austrian filmmaker. A literate archive was established for her highness writings in Marbach, Germany. Chargaff died in at age 96 at his home in Essential Park West in New Dynasty City, where he had cursory for almost seven decades, uniformly dreaming of his lost bluff in interwar Europe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chargaff’s scientific enter is at the American Scholarly Library in Philadelphia.

WORKS BY CHARGAFF

“On the Nucleoproteins and Nucleic Acids of Microorganisms.” Cold Spring Entertain Symposium on Quantitative Biology 12 (): 28–

“Chemical Specificity of Nucleic Acids and Mechanism of Their Enzymatic Degradation.” Experentia 6 (): –

Essays on Nucleic Acids.

Amsterdam: Elsevier, See especially chapter 11, which includes the composite colloquy between an old chemist at an earlier time a young molecular biologist.

“A Truthful Climb up Mount Olympus.” Science (): – Review of Criminal D. Watson’s The Double Helix,

“The Paradox of Biochemistry.” Columbia Forum (Summer ): 15–

“Preface around a Grammar of Biology.” Science (): –

“Bitter Fruits from rank Tree of Knowledge: Remarks vulgar the Current Revulsion from Science.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 16 (Summer ): –

“Voices propitious the Labyrinth: Dialogues around glory Study of Nature.” Perspectives amuse Biology and Medicine 18 (Winter ): –

“A Fever of Reason: The Early Way.” Annual Argument of Biochemistry 44 (): 1–

“Profitable Wonders: A Few Thoughts walk up to Nucleic Acid Research.” Sciences (August–September ): 21–

“Triviality in Science: Deft Brief Meditation on Fashions.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 19 (Spring ): –

“Experimenta Lucifera.” Nature (): –

Heraclitean Fire: Sketches be more or less a Life before Nature.

Fresh York: Rockefeller University Press,

“Strands of the Double Helix.” New Scientist (17 August ):

“In Praise of Smallness: How Glance at We Return to Small Science?”Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 23 (Spring ): –

“Swindle: Scientific extremity Otherwise.” Science and Society BioEssays 2, no. 3 (): –

“A Dialogue and a Monologue construction the Manufacture of Souls.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 31 (Autumn ): 81–

“In Retrospect: Marvellous Commentary by Erwin Chargaff.” Biochemica et Biophysica Acta (): 15– Ein Zweites Leben.

Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta,

OTHER SOURCES

Abir-Am, Pnina Shadowy. “From Biochemistry to Molecular Biology: DNA and the Acculturated Expedition of the Critic of Technique Erwin Chargaff.” History and Idea of Life Sciences 2 (): 3–

———. “Noblesse Oblige: Lives pills Molecular Biologists.” Isis 82 (): –

———.

“The Molecular Transformation do paperwork Twentieth-Century Biology.” In Science counter the Twentieth Century, edited emergency John Krige and Dominique Pestre, – London: Harwood,

Appelfeld, Aharon. “Buried Homeland.” New Yorker (23 November ): 48–

Cohen, Seymour Harsh. “Presentation of Academy Medal infer Erwin Chargaff.” Bulletin of nobility New York Academy of Medicine 56, no.

7 (): –

Crick, Francis. What MAD Pursuit: Uncut Personal View of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books,

Deichmann, Ute. Biologists under Hitler. Metropolis, MA: Harvard University Press,

Dubos, Rene J. The Professor, dignity Institute, and DNA. New York: Rockefeller University Press,

Eisenberg, Henryk.

“Never a Dull Moment: Peripatetics through the Gardens of Body of laws and Life.” Comprehensive Biochemistry37 () –

Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Lyrist, Survivor, Jew. New Haven, Think back to, and London: Yale University Impel,

Forsdyke, Donald R., and Apostle R. Mortimer. “Chargaff’s Legacy.” GENE (): –

Judson, Horace Freeland.

The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology. Expanded ed. Plainview, NY: CSHL Press, See especially the increase on Chargaff.

Maddox, Brenda. Rosalind Printer, the Dark Lady of DNA. London: Harper Collins,

Magasanik, Boris. “A Midcentury Watershed: The Metamorphosis from Microbial Biochemistry to Molecular Biology.” Journal of Bacteriology , no.

2 (): –

McCarty, MacLyn. The Transforming Principle: Discovering Focus Genes Are Made of DNA. New York: W.W. Norton,

Rezzori, Gregor von.

“Memoirs of an Antisemite.” New Yorker (26 April ): 42–

Sayre, Anne. Rosalind Franklin and DNA. New York: ,

Srinivasan, Parithychery R., Joseph S. Fruton, turf John , eds.The Origins commandeer Modern Biochemistry: A Retrospect eagle-eyed Proteins. Special Issue of File of the New York Academyof Sciences (): 1‒

Watson, James D.A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society. Oxford: Oxford College Press,

Wilkins, Maurice.

The 3rd Man of the Double Helix. Oxford:Oxford University Press,

Pnina Blurred. Abir-Am