Obituary Georg Gerber (1926-2014).

Abstract

Georg Gerber was born in Stuttgart on 5 May 1926. Both his parents were medical doctors who together ran a GP practice in Stuttgart. Being a single child, he received a perfect classical humanistic education. Even today, former colleagues when asked about their memories of Georg Gerber first mention his amazingly wide knowledge of literature, arts and music. After graduation from the Eberhard–Ludwigs–Gymnasium in Stuttgart in 1944, Georg Gerber was drafted in October 1944 into the German Army, but was spared from fighting in any serious battle. On his 19th birthday, he became an American prisoner of war and soon was transferred to France to help reconstruct roads and to labour in the fields and vineyards. Two years later, he worked as paramedic in French military hospitals in Alsace, France. After altogether nearly 3 years as prisoner of war Georg Gerber was released. While waiting for an admission in medical school, he worked as laboratory assistant in a Stuttgart hospital and studied physics and astronomy. He began his medical study in winter 1948 in Tubingen, following the example of his parents. However, because of his intense interest in science he also studied biology (zoology and biochemistry) in parallel to medicine. Within 5 years he graduated in both subjects, being awarded a MD for research carried out at the Dermatological Clinic dealing with the radiosensitivity of spermatocytes and a PhD in Biochemistry for research carried out at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Prof. A. Butenandt) dealing with the reproduction of bacterialike organism, both in the same year 1953. This opened his way to enter the ‘‘Max-Planck-Institut fur Biophysik’’ in Frankfurt. Its director Boris Rajewsky, by the way the founding editor of Radiation and Environmental Biophysics, was the leading radiation scientist in Germany, but not an easy boss. Yet entering the field of radiobiology in 1953 was a perfect choice. Radiobiology was popular at the time because of the widespread concern about the dangers from nuclear weapons. Georg Gerber’s background in biochemistry was perfectly suited to be in the forefront of the new direction of radiobiological research, away from pathology towards the biochemistry of radiation effects. In 1957, he moved to the USA, for 5 years working side by side with his wife Gisela in the Department of Experimental Radiology of the University of Rochester, NY. Publications of this time together with K. Altman addressed mainly the use of radionuclides for the investigation of metabolic biochemical processes in experimental animals. In 1962, he returned to Europe to become associated with the EURATOM programme of the European Commission K. Trott University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy