Biographical Memoirs Volume 85 (2004) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Berwind Petersen Kaufmann
Berwind Petersen Kaufmann
Pages 124-135
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 124... ...
Huntington Gessling, Donald by Photo
|
From page 125... ...
L E W I S B ERWIND P KAUFMANN began his career as a botanist but turned from studies of plant chromosomes to making pioneering contributions to three principal fields: the induction of chromosomal rearrangements by ionizing radiation, identification of nucleolar organizer and heterochromatic regions of the somatic chromosomes of Drosophila, and determination of the biochemical composition of plant and animal chromosomes using purified enzymes.
|
From page 126... ...
On a sabbatical in 1932-1933 Kaufmann was a National Research Council fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In 1936 he left the University of Alabama to become a guest investigator in the Department of Genetics of the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.
|
From page 127... ...
Later he and family members formed a mini-orchestra, his wife on piano, he on violin, and sons Berwind on flute and Carl on clarinet. At Southwestern College in western Tennessee, where he arrived in 1926, Kaufmann taught the theory of evolution, only one year after the Scopes trials in Dayton in eastern Tennessee.
|
From page 128... ...
After coming home for dinner he would return and work till midnight, "catching up on the literature," a way of life not uncommon among Drosophila workers then as now. He is said to have hated administrative work that he was required to do during the few years he was the director of the Department of Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor.
|
From page 129... ...
introduced a method of fixing and squashing the salivary gland chromosomes of the midge Bibio that revealed their true nature. It seems likely that Kaufmann's work on Drosophila chromosomes led to his taking a sabbatical in 1932-1933 at the California Institute of Technology as a National Research Council fellow.
|
From page 130... ...
Instead, strong support was provided for their being a doseresponse that approached a 2.0 power of the dose, supporting an alternative hypothesis in which separate, more or less independent breakages are induced by X rays that later, unless restituted, take part in producing a chromosomal rearrangement. For a history of the controversy over whether the total break production varies linearly with dose or approaches a 2.0 power, see (1941,2)
|
From page 131... ...
Kaufmann concluded that such regions contained interstitial heterochromatin. Kaufmann was quick to take advantage of the wealth of rearrangements generated in the X-ray studies to map the location of the NOs in salivary gland chromosomes (1938,2)
|
From page 132... ...
At Cold Spring Harbor, Kaufmann maintained a strong interest in science education, and his laboratory attracted several young biologists from the United States and abroad. I was fortunate to have been able to spend the summer of 1941 under his tutelage.
|
From page 133... ...
I am indebted to Kaufmann's sons, Carl and Anders, and Bobbie Stephens, Kaufmann's widow, for help in preparing this memoir -- as well as Mila Pollock, director, Library and Archives; Clare Bunce, archivist, of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; and Ellen Carpenter, archivist of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. An important source was an interview with Carl Kaufmann that is part of an oral history collection in the Cold Spring Harbor archives.
|
From page 134... ...
28:1-12. 1939 Induced chromosomal rearrangements in Drosophila melanogaster.
|
From page 135... ...
Ectopic pairing in salivary-gland chromosomes of Drosophila melanogaster.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.