Some personal remarks regarding Nikolai V. Timofeeff-Ressovsky and our collaboration

Some personal remarks regarding Nikolai V. Timofeeff-Ressovsky and our collaboration

Gudrun Erzgräber, Helmut Abel

On other occasions when I stand at this lectern, my speeches generally deal with projects and questions of campus development. This time a quite different request was made to me: on today’s celebration of the 100th birthday of Nikolai V. Timofeeff-Ressovsky, someone who knew him personally from his time after 1945 in Russia was also supposed to say a few words. This circle is very small, and from the Buch Campus there are only a few people who belong to it. I am one of them.

I became acquainted with Professor T.-R. in March 1967 in Obninsk. This was preceded by a long history: my teacher, Helmut Abel, who is also present here today, – a student of Robert Rompe, who in turn was a friend of T.-R., had tried during several official trips to Russia, at the behest of Rompe, to come into contact with T.-R and to bring him photos from Rompe, but unfortunately always to no avail. During one stay Helmut Abel had the opportunity to ask Dubinin, too, about T.-R. Dubinin seemed to know where T.-R. was staying and promised a meeting. On another trip to Russia in 1965 Helmut Abel was given notice upon his arrival in Moscow of a meeting with T.-R. in Obninsk the next day. He described the meeting to me as follows:

Sargenidse, the then director of the Obninsk Institute for Medical Radiology, received him to work out the details of his stay. At this meeting T.-R. was also present. In his usual spontaneous, but for Helmut Abel unexpectedly casual way, he brusquely interrupted the director’s suggestions, remarking that Abel could spare himself all of these visits. The director should leave Abel to him and he himself would tell him what was important.

Helmut Abel was – according to Timofeeff’s testimony – the first foreigner who was allowed to visit him legally after his banishment and subsequent return to the European part of Russia. T.-R. showed great interest in establishing a cooperation with Abel´s group. It was due to the fact that in the bloc of Eastern European countries existing at that time, his group was the only one which mastered the dosimetry of different kinds of radiation, which was indispensable for radiobiological research.

Then, in 1967, three colleagues of Helmut Abel travelled to Obninsk to T.-R. for a 10-day working stay with the aim of preparing a scientific cooperation in the field of radiobiology. Present in the group were Klaus Günther, the theoretician, whose later dissertation was reviewed by T.-R., the biologist Erika Tolkendorf, who was supposed to look more closely at the objects of investigation Drosophila melanogaster and Arabidopsis thaliana, and myself. As physicist I was to prepare the planned radiation experiments with the above-mentioned objects at the Rossendorf cyclotron. The aim of the planned experiments was to investigate the effect of different kinds of radiation on the mutation frequency in both objects. The experiments were to continue and supplement earlier works of T.-R. in Buch.

T.-R. received us with a very warm welcome. He asked many questions at the same time, showed impatience as far as the beginning of our joint experiments was concerned and had us visit all of his working groups so that we could become acquainted with his research.

At that time the institute in Obninsk was in the process of organization. Of the planned 2500 staff members, first only 1500 were working in the experimental and clinical part of this

enormous research and clinic complex. In the Institute for Medical Radiobiology T. R. and his wife Elena worked in the Department of Radiobiology and Genetics. He himself was head of the department, in which several research groups dealt with radiobiological, genetic and ecological problems.

On the first day we met only relatively brief for getting to know each other. (T. R. had to go to Moscow on the second day) But on the third day he devoted his time exclusively to the three of us. An entry in my notebook states: “On 15 March conversation with T.-R. about anything and everything, luncheon together, afternoon coffee and dinner in his apartment with his staff.” There we also experienced his special liking of 5-star cognac from Armenia. We also learned, a highly endowed genetics prize paid out in dollars not only enabled him to aid his young colleagues financially but also to obtain his favourite cognac for certain occasions.

On the following day, in a three-hour meeting, we prepared the two joint lectures. They were to be held in front of all the staff members of the experimental sector: Klaus Günther’s lecture about his theoretical approaches regarding the effect of radiation on biological objects, of which T.-R. was greatly impressed and T.-R.’s lecture about the contents of our planned collaboration.

In 1968 I made my second visit to T.-R. for a week. I went to see him with a special request. In those days financial difficulties threatened the existence of our Department of Biophysics in the former Central Institute for Nuclear Research Rossendorf. The cooperation which we had just begun was threatening to collapse. So I was supposed to ask T.-R. for help. This trip to Obninsk I made alone and with very mixed feelings, being completely uncertain about his reaction.

Since we had already conducted our first joint experiments and had thus also had T.-R.’s closest colleagues in Rossendorf as our guests T.-R.´s family welcomed me with a great deal of hospitality.

What impressed me most during this week were the evenings in his apartment. I was treated not as a guest like during the previous stay but rather was integrated more like a colleague and old acquaintance. These evenings have already been described so often. And yet I must mention them again. I just finished my studies at a large university only four years before. So for me the relationship of a professor to his students as it was demonstrated there was simply fascinating. In the corridor of the small apartment there were at least 10 pairs of house-slippers belonging to those who were daily guests or who were at home there. The discussions over tea and pastries were quite lively and open-minded about everything of interest: art, science, philosophy. There was less talk about institute problems. When these topics came up, however, T.-R. did not mince matters, but rather specified grievances by name. For me as a young university graduate this was the first earnest, loud criticism of the conditions under socialism that I had heard. Only later, when I knew more about his life and I myself had been working and living in Russia for many years did I ask myself how he could talk like that without being punished. However, he did not get by with this unpunished – at the end of the sixties he had to give up his work in the Obninsk Institute for just such reasons.

Obviously T. R. also kept in good memory this encounter and the long evenings of discussions in Obninsk in 1968. For 12 years later in 1980, T.-R. sent me cordial greetings along with the postscript that he had not forgotten our profound conversations while sipping a cognac.

In the result of my diplomatic mission T.-R. wrote a letter to his old friend Rompe, who was then head of the special section Physics North of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. I took this letter home with me as original version. It characterises the personality of T.-R. so much that I would like to read aloud the content of it here:

Timofeeff’s letter to Rompe:

We have not seen each other for an eternity and have not corresponded with each other either. Well, both of us are not great letter-writers. Nonetheless, I have followed your career, and you probably have some picture of the way, thank you very much for the photos that I received from you.

Today I am writing you concerning “business”. For over a year we have been undertaking a very gratifying and fruitful cooperation with the Department of Biophysics in the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf near Dresden; the topic is: the quantitative comparison of the effect of different kinds of ionising radiation (x-rays, fast protons, deuterons, alpha-particles and neutrons) on radiobiological and radiogenetic reactions of Drosophila and Arabidopsis on the basis of a comparative dosimetry. The colleagues in Rossendorf have all of the radiation sources needed for biological experiments and, above all, reliable comparative dosimetry (which no longer exists anywhere else in the socialist bloc). Now I hear that due to some kind of restructuring, the Rossendorf Department of Biophysics (and with it our cooperation) is to be scrapped. That would be a terrible pity! A joint research paper (in “studia biophysica”) has already been published and three further works are finished and in the press. We have a detailed plan for further experiments and a whole series of further joint projects.

Since you are a big shot in the academy and can surely exercise really enormous influence on diverse dealings – I am asking you most respectfully (of course after ripe consideration) to save our very fruitful cooperation.

T.-R.’s letter to Rompe was a great help, and the experiments could be continued.

The example described above, which illustrates T.-R.’s willingness to take the trouble to help others, was not to remain the only one for us.

In the beginning of 1969 there were problems in Rossendorf to get the desired radiation times at the accelerator in definite time intervals which would fit the biological experiments. Promptly a letter came from T.-R. to Helmut Abel, reminding us of our agreements and offering to ask his old friend Schintlmeister, head of the cyclotron at that time, for assistance.

The letter exists here in the original; where it states:

Excerpt of T.-R.’s letter to Helmut Abel:

With regard to our cooperation certain difficulties seem to be arising and, indeed, on your side. Dr. Haberer has sent us a plan of the radiation possibilities in Rossendorf. From this plan it can be seen that in September only one radiation with alpha particles can take place. The radiation of Arabidopsis seeds, however, must be carried out in September as planned, and namely with x-rays, with fast protons (and in fact according to your promise, with reduced dose exposure, comparable to that of x-rays) and with fast neutrons.

...It is perhaps technically easier (in order not to have to replace a deuteron source with a proton source) to replace the fast protons with fast deuterons; that would not matter much one way or the other if the dose exposure of deuterons and the protons as well could be reduced.

...If you think it would be proper and beneficial – my wife and I could write our old friend Professor Schintlmeister and respectfully ask him to make the two required radiation dates in September available to us. But perhaps such a diplomatic measure is not necessary? Please write us about the possibility of a continuation of our cooperation....

During the time we collaborated with T.-R. we got to know three of his research fellows in Rossendorf : Ivanov, Ginter and Glotoff, each of whom repeatedly worked for several weeks with us. All three of them are here today, and we have been looking forward to seeing them for such a long time. From our cooperation a total of seven joint publications about our first results were published in “studia biophysica”. Unfortunately, the experiments could not be finished. In the beginning of the seventies T.-R.’s department was dissolved and his research fellows ended up in different locations in Russia. At this time also our contact with T.-R. was broken off.

It is known that later on T.-R. worked as a consultant for medical-biological problems in the institute with which we also cooperated for over 10 years under the auspices of the Intercosmos programme. In 1973 and 1974, however, Helmut Abel was able to re-establish the contact to T.-R. via colleagues from the Intercosmos Institute in Moscow. However, the meetings had a conspiratorial character and took place in apartments in Moscow. We had the feeling that T.-R. was no longer permitted to have any official contact to foreigners. In 1980 at the geneticists’ congress some of our colleagues had the opportunity to speak with him once again.

But even the illegal contact was very helpful to us. We owe T.-R. the support for the development of a radiobiological working group at the nuclear research centre in Dubna from 1976 on. About the scientific conception which we submitted in Dubna T.-R.´s opinion was taken. Thus, indirectly I owe my almost eight-year stay in Dubna to T.-R.

Helmut Abel and I experienced the day of his death in Dubna. There we had been working since 1978 together with W. I. Korogodin, a former research fellow of T.-R. Unfortunately, our urgent requests to permit us to travel to Obninsk for the burial were not granted.

From my own experience I can say that words are not enough to sufficiently characterise the personality of T.-R. This has induced us to compile a few clips out of existing film material in which T.-R. can be seen, heard, and – even – experienced: his clear, insistent voice, his vigorous gestures, his insights about life and development.