Goldschmidt, Richard Benedict b.April 12, 1878; Frankfurt am Main d.April 24, 1958; Berkeley, California
Eminent German biologist and zoologist who did pathbreaking research in the field of evolution and who emigrated to the United States in 1936.
Richard Goldschmidt came from an old German Jewish bourgeois family in Frankfurt.
He was raised in that city and received a classical comprehensive education with emphasis on Latin, Greek, history, literature, and science. After a long career, he is now remembered as one of the most controversial biologists of the twentieth century.Goldschmidt went to the gymnasium in Frankfurt, planning to study natural sciences after having finished school. In 1896 he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, and in 1898 he moved to the University of Munich. Here Goldschmidt completed his education in the German morphological tradition under Richard Hertwig (1850-1937). In 1902 he defended his thesis, and in 1904 he became a Privat- dozent. Goldschmidt was Hertwig’s assistant until 1913. In that year he was appointed director of the genetics department of the newly established Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin. He held this position until 1935, when he was forced to leave Germany.
Goldschmidt was known as a zoologist, biologist, and geneticist of exceptional ability. His topics of research can clearly be differentiated. He started with research in cytology, fertilization, and embryology in trematodes and nematodes before he turned his attention to the experimental study of genetics. Goldschmidt undertook a series of tests on the moth Ly- mantria, developing theories on physiological genetics and sex determination (1911-1920). In this process, Goldschmidt pointed out the existence of intersexuality: he was able to obtain different degrees of intersexuality in this moth up to a complete inversion of the genetic sex into the opposite. He also performed research on evolution.
His studies of the geographical variation of Lymantria led him to propose two mechanisms for evolution (ca. 1918—1935): (1) systemic mutations, which meant large rearrangements of the chromosome; and (2) developmental macromutations, which happened in developmentally important genes and led to large phenotypic effects. Finally, Goldschmidt shifted his object of research to the fruit fly Drosophila. He studied its physiological genetics and in 1938 proposed an unorthodox theory on the nature of the gene rejecting its corpuscularity. Like some of his earlier ideas, this proposition aroused violent reactions among his contemporaries because it stood against the accepted, prevailing concepts.Goldschmidt’s relation to the United States underwent different phases. He was fascinated, disappointed, and again attracted. Just after he had become director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute and while he was on a research trip to Japan, World War I started. Because of the British sea blockade Goldschmidt feared being captured and imprisoned on the journey home. American friends suggested that he should come to the United States so as not to be imprisoned by the British. Goldschmidt followed this suggestion and landed in New Haven, where he immediately commenced new research projects, tried to integrate into the scientific community (by spending the summers in the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole), and made new friends (among them Jacques Loeb). Goldschmidt’s wife and children were able to follow their husband and father in 1915. However, the situation changed when the United States entered the war in 1917. Goldschmidt as well as his family were detained as German citizens in custody, and publishers refused to print his papers, fearing boycotts of their journals for publishing German authors. Frustrated and disappointed, Goldschmidt left the United States at the first possible moment after the war ended on a transport of imprisoned sailors and civilians in 1919.
Back in Germany, Goldschmidt soon realized that the economic crisis after the Treaty of Versailles made research almost impossible. Furthermore, he noticed a growing antisemitism threatening him and his family. These circumstances made him look for a position in the United States again, although friends like Jacques Loeb told him that due to the animosities in the United States against Germans, this plan would be almost impossible to accomplish. Goldschmidt stayed in Germany until 1935, when the National Socialist regime made work impossible for him. He received offers from England and Turkey but accepted a professorship at the University of California. In 1936 he left for Berkeley, where he remained until his death in 1958.
Heiner Fangerau
See also Intellectual Exile; Loeb, Jacques; World War I, German Prisoners and Civilian Internees in
References and Further Reading
Dietrich, Michael R. “On the Mutability of Genes and Geneticists: The ‘Americanization’ of Richard Goldschmidt and Victor Jollos.” Perspectives on Science 4 (1996): 321-345.
------. “Richard Goldschmidt: Hopeful Monsters and Other Heresies.” Nature Reviews Genetics 4 (2003). 68-74.
Piternick, Leonie Kellen, ed. Richard Goldschmidt: Controversial Geneticist and Creative Biologist. Basel: Birkhauser, 1980.