Amarcord

Abstract

Unfortunately, one has to choose between describing science, and doing it.John Maynard Smith YEARS OF LEARNINGI was born 1924 in Bern. My father was a physician who had obtained his training before the First World War. He believed in the power of rational thinking and in his spare time entertained my younger brother and myself with various scientific tricks. He showed us, by letting rise to the ceiling the ashes of burning tissue paper, that air becomes lighter upon heating; we learned about catalysis by setting aflame a lump of sugar endued with papa's cigar ashes; imperceptible rotation of the ambient world was demonstrated with a makeshift Foucault pendulum of watch and chain fastened to the luggage rack in a railway carriage proceeding through one of the coiled tunnels in the Alps.We learned to avoid splashing by pouring liquid down a glass rod and to fold a paper filter zig-zag without any zig-zigs. When my tonsils were removed, the loss of pleasure in swallowing food was compensated by the gift of the book Du und die Natur (You and Nature) (61), which presents modem physics in a humorous yet fairly accurate way for the layman. As it still stands on my which was an outburst of destructive irrationalism, staged with the help of a seemingly rational advance in weaponry. Our disenchantment came when we realized that scientific thinking in no way improved human attitude and wit nessed that many scientists (and representatives of other academic branches) were obsequious to fascism and that science was wholly unable to stop man kind from stumbling into the next abyss of despair. As if this were not enough, science handed over to technocrats exploits of unprecedented ambiguity by tampering with the two nuclei in nature [Erwin Chargaff (19)]. We know the misuses of nuclear physics; we hope never to see those possible with the cell nucleus. School was mostly tedious and at times truly painful, but at least free of charge. Memorizing the shape of letters and learning by rote the multiplication table was not all that bad, but-again-the application revealed the stupidity of the system: in writing compositions we were not allowed to delete anything, with the result that we did not learn to express in writing our genuine thoughts; whenever an en·or was on the paper, we had to twist the planned sentence so as to use up the mistaken signs. Another nonsense was standing in the benches while the master murmured a chain of arithmetic operations; he who succeeded in shouting the correct result first was allowed to sit down. The teachers probably were aware of the ravage done by the official plans for forming the mind and tried to make good for the weekly ordeal by reading to us on Saturdays from II to 12 a.m., edifying pieces of literature like The Canterville Ghost (111) or Pallieter (103). In the Gymnasium we were exposed during six years to six hours a week of Latin without acquiring the ability to read simple texts in classical Latin fluently. Things improved when, in the last three years, we caught glimpse of the spiritua...

The 59th Symposium of the Society of General Physiologists Na,K-ATPase and Related Cation Pumps: Structures, Mechanisms, and Diseases

“…Frustrated by the failure to observe the expected stimulation of Na + transport, Schatzmann decided to try another steroid, k-strophanthoside, which produced a clear inhibition of the pump. An account of this discovery is provided in Schatzmann's recollection published in 1995 (Schatzmann, 1995). It quickly became apparent that rodent Na,K-ATPase is far less sensitive to inhibition by cardiac glycosides than other species.…”

Hans Jürg Schatzmann (1924–2021)

“…Hans Jürg Schatzmann died on 2 October 2021, at the age of 97. An autobiographical account with details of his life and career was published in Annual Reviews of Physiology in 1995 after he retired from the University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland [1]. Figure 1 is republished from that article.…”

“…In late 1965, Privat Dozent (more-or-less equivalent to an assistant or associate professor) Schatzmann became the Professor of Veterinary Pharmacology. We Reproduced, with permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., from [1].…”

Obituary: Hans Jürg Schatzmann (1924–2021)

“…A hypothesis suggested that mineralocorticoids (MC) might be involved in the regulation of membrane transports. Schatzmann reported in his very readable autobiographical essay (Schatzmann 1995) that he, initially, was not aware that the stereochemistry of cardiac glycosides differs greatly from the one of cholesterol-derived steroid hormones. Therefore, he expected some kind of competitive interaction between MC and ouabain and was surprised that its inhibitory action was completely unaffected by MC.…”