Karl Günter Zimmer (12 July 1911 – 29 February 1988) was a German nuclear chemist who is best known for his work in understanding the ionizing radiation on Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and did fundamental work on radiation biology.
In 1935, he published the major work, Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with Timofeev-Resovskij, and Max Delbrück; it was considered to be a major advance in understanding the nature of gene mutation and gene structure.
From 1945–1955, Zimmer was one of many German nuclear scientists in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons but left Russia to eventually settle in Germany.
Biography Education and career
There is little or no information available about his early life but it is known that Zimmer obtained his doctorate in 1934 with a thesis on photochemistry from the sources provided by University of Tennessee.Zimmer Papers – University of Tennessee.Herrlich, 1988, 178.
Early on, Zimmer worked as an advisor in radiotherapeutic physics in a radiological hospital and as an employee of Auergesellschaft AG in Berlin. However, he completed most of his theoretical work at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft's Institut für Hirnforschung (lit. Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research (KWIH)) in Berlin-Buch.Today, the KWIH is known as the Max-Planck Institut für Hirnforschung, MPIH . All of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes were named after Max Planck after World War II. Zimmer worked in Nikolay Timofeev-Resovskij's genetics department at the KWIH."Николай Владимирович Тимофеев-Ресовский" transliterated, from a one-to-one American English convention on the Cyrillic alphabet, becomes "Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij".H. J. Born, N. W. Timoféeff-Ressovsky and K. G. Zimmer Biologische Anwendungen des Zählrohres, Naturwissenschaften Volume 30, Number 40, 600-603 (1942). The authors were identified as being in the genetics department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Buch. Timofeev-Resovskij, a Russian national with Soviet citizenship, worked in Germany starting in 1924, and he stayed even after Adolf Hitler's party came to power in 1933.Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney The GULAG Archipelago 1918-1956, An Experiment in Literary Investigation, I-II 634 (Harper and Row, 1973, 1974).Riehl and Seitz, 1996, 25. Very early in Zimmer's career, in 1935, he published the major work, Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with Timofeev-Resovskij, and Max Delbrück; it was considered to be a major advance in understanding the nature of gene mutation and gene structure.Timofeeff-Ressovky, N. W., K. G. Zimmer, and M. Delbrück "Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur" (Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1935). Nachrichten Göttingen - "Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur" (1935). At Auergesellschaft, Zimmer collaborated with Nikolaus Riehl, director of scientific research at the works.N. Riehl, N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij, and K. G. Zimmer Mechanismus der Wirkung ionisierender Strahlen auf biologische Elementareinheiten, Die Naturwissenschaften Volume 29, Numbers 42-43, 625-639 (1941). Riehl was identified as being in Berlin, and the other two were identified as being in Berlin-Buch.
At the close of World War II, Russia had special search teams operating in Austria and Germany, especially in Berlin, to identify and "requisition" equipment, materiel, intellectual property, and personnel useful to the Soviet program of nuclear weapons. The exploitation teams were under the Russian Alsos and they were headed by Lavrenij Beria's deputy, Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin. These teams were composed of scientific staff members, in NKVD officer's uniforms, from the bomb project's only laboratory, Laboratory No. 2, in Moscow. In mid-May 1945, the Russian physicists Georgy Flerov and Lev Artsimovich, in NKVD colonel's uniforms, identified Zimmer and compelled him to take them to the location of Riehl and his staff, who had evacuated their Auergesellschaft facilities and were west of Berlin, hoping to be in an area occupied by the American or British military forces. Riehl was detained at the search team's facility in Berlin-Friedrichshagen for a week. This sojourn in Berlin turned into 10 years in the former Soviet Union for Riehl and his staff, including their families, were flown to Moscow on 9 July 1945. Riehl was to head up a uranium production group at Plant No. 12 in Ehlektrostal' (Электросталь"Электросталь" is sometimes transliterated as "Elektrostal". A one-to-one transliteration scheme transliterates the Cyrillic letter "Э" as "Eh", which distinguishes it from that for the Cyrillic letter "Е" given as "E". Transliterations often also drop the soft sign "ь".).Riehl and Seitz, 1996, 71-72.Oleynikov, 2000, 7.
In Russia
From 1945 to 1950, Riehl was in charge of uranium production at Plant No. 12 in Ehlektrostal'. When Riehl learned that Hans-Joachim Born and Karl Zimmer were being held in Krasnogorsk, in the main PoW camp for Germans with scientific degrees, Riehl arranged though Zavenyagin to have them sent to Ehlektrostal'. Alexander Catsch was also sent there. At Ehlektrostal', Riehl had a hard time incorporating Born, Catsch, and Zimmer into his tasking on uranium production, as Born was a radiochemist, Catsch was a physician and radiation biologist, and Zimmer was a physicist and radiation biologist.Riehl and Seitz, 1996, 2, 31, 71, 83, 89-104, 121-128, and 202.Maddrell, 2006, 179-180, 186, 189, and 210-221.Oleynikov, 2000, 11, and 15-16.
After the detonation of the Russian uranium bomb, uranium production was going smoothly and Riehl's oversight was no longer necessary at Plant No. 12. Riehl then went, in 1950, to head an institute in Sungul', where he stayed until 1952. Essentially the remaining personnel in his group were assigned elsewhere, with the exception of H. E. Ortmann, A. Baroni (PoW), and Herbert Schmitz (PoW), who went with Riehl. However, Riehl had already sent Born, Catsch, and Zimmer to the institute in December 1947. The institute in Sungul' was responsible for the handling, treatment, and use of radioactive products generated in reactors, as well as radiation biology, dosimetry, and radiochemistry. The institute was known as Laboratory B, and it was overseen by the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD (MVD after 1946), the same organization which oversaw the Russian Alsos operation. The scientific staff of Laboratory B – a ShARAShKA – was both Soviet and German, the former being mostly political prisoners or exiles, although some of the service staff were criminals.Riehl and Seitz, 1996, 121-128, and 202.Oleynikov, 2000, 15-17. (Laboratory V, in Obninsk, headed by Heinz Pose, was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Other notable Germans at the facility were Werner Czulius, Hans Jürgen von Oertzen, Ernst Rexer, and Carl Friedrich Weiss.Polunin, V. V. and V. A. Staroverov Personnel of Special Services in the Soviet Atomic Project 1945 – 1953 [In Russian] (FSB, 2004) .)
Laboratory B was known under another cover nameThe Russians used various types of cover names for facilities to obfuscate both the location and function of a facility; in fact, the same facility could have multiple and changing designations. The nuclear design bureau and assembly plant Arzamas-16, for example, had more than one designation – see Yuli Khariton and Yuri Smirnov The Khariton Version, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 20-31 (May 1993). Some facilities were known by post office box numbers, почтовом ящике (pochtovom yashike), abbreviated as п/я. See Maddrell, 2006, 182-183. Also see Demidov, A. A. On the tracks of one "Anniversary" [In Russian] 11.08.2005, which relates the history changing post office box designations for Arzamas-16. as Объект 0211 (Ob'ekt 0211, Object 0211), as well as Object B.Timofeev-Resovskij, N. V. Kratkaya Avtobiograficheskaya Zapiska (Brief Autobiographical Note) ."Я ПРОЖИЛ СЧАСТЛИВУЮ ЖИЗНЬ" К 90-летию со дня рождения Н. В. Тимофеева-Ресовского ("I Lived a Happy Life" – In Honor of the 90th Anniversary of the Birth of Timofeev-Resovskij, ИСТОРИЯ НАУКИ. БИОЛОГИЯ (History of Science – Biology), 1990, № 9, 68-104 (1990) . This commemorative has many photographs of Timofeev-Resovskij.Ratner, V. A. Session in Memory of N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij in the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences [In Russian], Vestnik VOGis Article 4, No. 15 (2000).Izvarina, E. Nuclear project in the Urals: History in Photographs [In Russian] Nauka Urala Numbers 12-13, June 2000 . (In 1955, Laboratory B was closed. Some of its personnel were transferred elsewhere, but most of them were assimilated into a new, second nuclear weapons institute, Scientific Research Institute-1011, NII-1011, today known as the Russian Federal Nuclear Center All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics, RFYaTs–VNIITF. NII-1011 had the designation предприятие п/я 0215, i.e., enterprise post office box 0215 and Объект 0215; the latter designation has also been used in reference to Laboratory B after its closure and assimilation into NII-1011.Sulakshin, S. S. (Scientific Editor) Social and Political Process of Economic Status of Russia [In Russian] 2005.RFYaTS-VNIITF Creators – See the entry for УРАЛЕЦ Александр Константинович (URALETs Aleksandr Konctantinovich) [In Russian].RFYaTS-VNIITF Creators – See the entry for ТИМОФЕЕВ-РЕСОВСКИЙ Николай Владимирович (TIMOFEEV-RESOVSKIJ Nikolaj Vladimorovich) [In Russian].Penzina, V. V. Archive of the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics, named after E. I. Zababakhin. Resource No. 1 – Laboratory "B". [In Russian] (VNIITF ). Penzina is cited as head of the VNIITF Archive in Snezhinsk.)
One of the political prisoners in Laboratory B was Riehls' colleague from the KWIH, N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij, who, as a Soviet citizen, was arrested by the Soviet forces in Berlin at the conclusion of the war, and he was sentenced to 10 years in the Gulag. In 1947, Timofeev-Resovskij was rescued out of a harsh Gulag prison camp, nursed back to health, and sent to Sungul' to complete his sentence, but still make a contribution to the Soviet atomic bomb project. At Laboratory B, Timofeev-Resovskij headed a biophysics research department, in which Born, Catsch, and Zimmer were able to conduct work similar to that which they had done in Germany, and all three became section heads in Timofeev-Resovskij's department.
Before being rejoined in the Soviet Union, Zimmer, Timofeev-Resovskij, and Riehl had collaborated on the biological effects of ionizing radiation. Also, Zimmer and Timofeev-Resovskij had put together a manuscript which was a comprehensive summary of their work and that of others on radiation-induced gene mutation and related areas; the book, Das Trefferprinzip in der Biologie, was published in Germany while they were in the Soviet Union.Nikolaj V. Timofeev-Ressovskij and Karl Günter Zimmer Biophysik. Bd. 1. Das Trefferprinzip in der Biologie (Hirzel, 1947). In 1948, due to Lysenkoism, there were grave consequences for the institute in Sungul' in general and for Zimmer and Timofeev-Resovskij in particular. The book was put on a forbidden list and the laboratory was not allowed to conduct research on its topics. Since the book represented many years of Zimmer's life's work, he was rather downcast by the circumstances.Riehl and Seitz, 1996, 202.