Carsten Bresch

Carsten Bresch ( born September 5, 1921 in Berlin ) is a German physicist and geneticist and professor emeritus of the University of Freiburg

Professional career

Carsten Bresch studied physics and in 1947 was one of the first students of the Max Delbrück in the destroyed post-war Berlin. Since 1949 he worked as an assistant at the former Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Göttingen, where he introduced bacteriophage as a research topic in the German genetics. 1958 went to the University of Göttingen Bresch of Cologne, where he prepared the establishment of a genetics institute on behalf of the Max Delbrück and the botany professor Joseph Straub. After completion of addition Bresch attracted the researcher Max Delbrück, Walter Harm, Peter Starlinger and the biochemist Hans Georg Zachau and later the nucleic acid chemist Ulf Hennig in research premises a.

1964 Bresch received an appointment to the Chair of Genetics at the University of Freiburg, where he had set up a separate Department in connection with the restructuring of the Faculty of Biology. As this was also associated major developments, he worked as well as his colleague Rainer Hertel temporarily in the U.S. on the Biology Division of the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies ( SCAS ) in Dallas, Texas, whose leadership had been transferred to him.

From 1968 Bresch was then in Freiburg, where he held the chair of genetics at the University within the Institute of Biology III. At the same time, he was Head of the Central Laboratory for mutagenicity by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

His main research field was the genetics of bacteriophages. Bresch is the author of the force for many years as an international standard textbook of genetics work: Classical and molecular genetics. In addition to his research and university teaching activities, Carsten Bresch intensively engaged in theological and scientific, interdisciplinary conversations.

Work

Breschs major research merit was to have co-sponsored the bacteriophages as objects of research in genetics and molecular biology together with his cousin Thomas Trautner at the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Göttingen. In the initial phase of molecular biology are two philosophical differently oriented schools faced each other: The name " molecular biology " in 1952 the British molecular biologist William Astbury coined by the supporters of the structurally oriented school, who spoke on the structure of biological molecules Great. Carsten Bresch was like his teacher Max Delbrück at the informationally -oriented school that represented the character of the information process in genetics in the foreground. Delbrück had worked in the 1930s as Postdoktorant with Niels Bohr on genetic- information-theoretical questions and was somehow " mutated " as physicists to biologists. Delbrück had come to the conclusion: " The biology is too important to be left to the biologists alone. " Carsten Bresch followed this multi-disciplinary approach of his teacher, and built him his life - in his work: intermediate life (see below) also ideologically - from.

Bresch is the author of the translated into several languages, standard textbook " Classical and molecular genetics ." Much has been discussed and will be the main ideological work: " intermediate life ". Bresch dares in this book, the large-scale natural-philosophical attempt to develop from the illustration assured results of evolutionary research out perspectives for the future of humanity. He thinks the evolutionary principle of integration down to the planetary level consistently and outlines a " planetary giant beings " in the finally all creatures are integrated: " All samples of our globe will then be connected to a huge ' intelligent organism ' - into a single order! to emphasize its singularity, we shall call such a structure a ' MONON '. " All natural phenomena from astrophysics to the brain and human society derives from Bresch of the uniform basic principle of pattern and information growth and their increasing integration, which leads to ever more integrated and thus more complex forms. Three stages of development are visible: 1 ) the matter, 2 ) of the living and 3 ) the intellectual and culture. Having arrived at this stage represents Bresch crucial for Him and humanity issues. Is it in this evolution by chance and necessity, a Irrlauf or to a distant goal? Bresch as guides his readers to the roots of the last questions. "The book is thus a weighty contribution to a new self and world understanding of modern man, who faces the question of the meaning of life perplexed than ever before." Breschs " intermediate life " a scientific presentation of Teilhard de Chardin represents strong theologically oriented, universal concept of evolution. Bresch features explicitly in his presentation the point or the point at which it exceeds a purely scientific description in favor of an ideological interpretation. He therefore embarks in any way in the situation of an unauthorized, methodological border crossing between science on the one hand and religion and theology on the other side. Bresch engaged intensively in interdisciplinary scientific- theological conversations and discussions on evolution. In this environment, he founded together with the Freiburg theologian Helmut Riedlinger 1981 from a theological and biological seminar circle at the University of Freiburg out the interdisciplinary working group AGEMUS and published the Freiburger AGEMUS - newsletter of this working group. In November 2010, appeared in Schattauer publishing his book "Evolution - What remains of God."

Footnotes

Publications

As the author

• Classical and molecular genetics. Berlin: Springer, 1964, ISBN 3-540-05802-8 (. Erw 3rd edition 1972)
• Intermediate life. Evolution without a goal? Munich: Piper, 1977, ISBN 3-492-02270-7.
• The Devil's New Clothes. Munich: TR -Verlag Union, 1978, ISBN 3-8058-0903-4.
• Evolution - What remains of God. Stuttgart: Schattauer, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7945-2757-1.

As editor

• AGEMUS - Newsletter: Workshops Evolution, future of mankind and questions of meaning. Freiburg 1981 until 1983.
• Can we know God from nature? Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1990, ISBN 3-451-02125-0.
• Good and evil in evolution. Scientists, philosophers and theologians in the dispute. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1995, ISBN 3-8047-1423-4.

Various