Genesis and Evolution | A Jewish general

My family history is more communist than Jewish. My maternal grandmother left the Jewish community in Vienna in 1917 and joined the Austrian Communist Party. But my father’s family also included communists.

This quality ruled the family life for decades, and I myself was born between two events that shook not only the communist world: the invasion of Hungary by Soviet troops in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. I remember that there were heated discussions about this within family when I was growing up.

Soon there was a departure from communist ideals. Therefore, I myself was no longer taught by that ideology. I grew up with very normal middle-class values, but not in the Jewish tradition at first. Judaism only played a role in the sense that I was always told not to get too comfortable, that I might always have to pack my bags again. More than two decades earlier, my grandparents’ membership in the communist party had led some to move to England and others to the Soviet Union in due course.

High school diploma and trip to Israel

After graduating from high school, I traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz. I had already contacted the Jewish student council in Vienna, and they gave me an address in Tel Aviv where I should report. Then I understood that it was the address of a left-wing kibbutz movement, and the agricultural kibbutz I came with was a left-wing one.

In Vienna, I studied mathematics because it was always easy for me when I was in school. Also, I had a math teacher in high school that I really liked. Previously he taught physics and mathematics, and I liked that even more. Now I must say that both my parents had doctorates in physics and my grandfather was one too. However, at some point, my teacher left the physics class and I no longer liked his successor very much. At that time it was clear that my passion was mathematics.

The Torah has stories that I think about a lot.

After graduation, I got a job developing software in Vienna. One day I was sitting in a coffee house and reading ZEIT. Since I wasn’t very accomplished in my job for a long time, I also looked at job ads from time to time. The advertisement was looking for a scientist in the IT sector who should be able to program in a rare programming language. Unfortunately, it was the one I was working on at the time.

The applicant should also have an interest in biology. Now I had written my diploma thesis in mathematics on differential equation and population genetics. Biology was just an excuse for a differential equation, but I was able to demonstrate my interest in biology. That’s how I got a place at the University of Heidelberg. There I had to develop programs for biological research, and that’s when I was really inspired. In the evening I always read what I had not understood during the day in a molecular biology book.

Development in Heidelberg

I eventually received my doctorate in Heidelberg. My thesis was devoted to the comparison of several biological sequences. The problem was that proteins exist in our cells. These are molecules that can be thought of as beaded threads with 20 different colored beads on them. But since the chain is longer, beads of these colors repeat. And protein corresponds to such a series of pearls, the pearls themselves are amino acids.

If there are pearl beads with a sequence of the same color, it is our job to recognize this and place pearls of the same color on top of each other. Now it’s really not easy to do without accidentally breaking the chain. But if you think of it as a rubber chain that you can stretch, then you can bring the right colors together. This is the problem we have in biology because different molecules have evolved continuously throughout evolutionary history.

But it is still clear that they have the same origin, that is why there are pearl beads that are similar. Because they are the result of evolution, we can track them to understand how living things have changed over millions of years. When two sequences are very similar, such as that of humans and chimpanzees, one can see that the evolutionary origins of both are recent. Through this sequence we can understand the course of evolution at the level of molecular composition. So this is how my scientific career began.

Postdoctoral fellow in Los Angeles

After finishing my doctorate, I was a postdoctoral researcher in Los Angeles, then head of department at the German Cancer Research Center for five years, and since 2000 I have been director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and now also professor of honor Free University of Berlin. Of course, I often have to ask myself how I can reconcile this research on molecular evolution with the story of creation in the Torah. Mainly due to the fact that as Gabbai in Pestalozzistrasse synagogue, I participate in religious life.

The Torah contains stories that I meditate on, and I try to demonstrate their value as stories. I really can’t believe that the world is only 5,784 years old, but I still don’t believe that my research is fundamentally anti-Jewish. Jews have always been very friendly to science and have always valued its evidence.

The question is often asked why there is an above average number of Jews among Nobel Prize winners. Well, you get the Nobel Prize for original work, i.e. for previously unexpected results. Usually this is because someone asked a good question, especially a new one.

It has always been in the nature of Judaism that the best questions have always been valued.

It has always been in the nature of Judaism that the best questions have always been valued. Even in my family, which was not very Jewish at the time, people were always discussing and asking questions. And in the relationship between the Torah and evolution, my summary of the joke is: This must be a very smart God who thought about evolution, then at some point sent it and let it go on its own.

As is well known, Judaism is also a matter of the whole family. I was lucky enough to be introduced to a Jewish woman at a Jewish friend’s wedding in Augsburg. That was the beginning. We have now been happily married for 33 years and have two wonderful children: a daughter who has a doctorate in psychology in Canada and a son who is training to be a rabbi in New York at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

I think it’s great that he’s doing what he absolutely loves. The only contribution I sometimes make as a scientifically minded person is that in conversation with him I often demand: “More precision, please!” , as in natural science. At the same time, it is more important in his work than mine that he focuses on people.

This also applies in a very special way to our daughter, who is doing research at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He is bilingual, perhaps due to the many languages ​​his grandparents spoke. In addition, he also works as a psychologist at the Central Office of Jewish Welfare in Germany in Frankfurt. Today I have what I did not have in my childhood: a Jewish family.

Recorded by Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg