A Matter of Wonder

Where do we come from? Is our destiny determined by the genes we inherit? Do we all see the same blue color when we look at the sky? In this book Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz, the world-renowned biochemist, gives lucid – albeit often surprising – answers to universal questions and takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery across the boundaries of scientific disciplines. With passion, warmth and a keen sense of wonder, he draws on philosophy, cultural history and art to formulate his reflections on the mystery of life. The key to understanding life is to be found in its chemistry, and he proves that this is no dry endeavor and certainly not devoid of beauty. The result is a collection of eloquently and poetically written essays dealing with key issues in the natural sciences. It will appeal not only to scientists, but also to all curious minds, regardless of educational and professional background. Schatz, G. (Basel) Translated by A. Shields Excerpt from ‘Portrait of a protein’ Our society sees art and science as separate, even antithetical worlds: art is intuitive, natural science objective; art seeks the particular in the general, natural science the general in the particular. From natural science, we expect the truth that reveals the lie. We scientists have played our part in the development of this unhappy separation. If we have an artistic streak, we hide it behind wooden language and dry tables or charts. And when we do use images, we omit nothing, or we avoid putting too much emphasis on anything in them, for fear of being considered dishonest. However, this code of honor makes it increasingly diffi cult for us to describe complex systems. The metabolism of living cells, the earth‘s climate, and the structure of entire galaxies, for example, all give us too much information to be reproduced with our traditional thoroughness. Contents Strangers in Me How bacteria became part of our body Ominous Visitors Mind-bending parasites Punishing Protectors Our sense of pain as a protector – and a torturer The Little Brother Brutal tuberculosis and insidious leprosy The Voice of Silence Our astonishing sense of hearing Clocks of Life How we sense the earth's rotation and how we age My World Why each of us sees, smells and tastes things differently Children of the Sun Colored lights blinking in the depths of our oceans Mysterious Senses The magnetic sense in bacteria, turtles and birds Fateful Colors How our skin pigments have shaped human history Portrait of a Protein Art and science – the two sisters Traces What our genome tells us about human origins Stardust How exploding stars gave our body iron Creative Craters Hot meteor craters as possible cradles of life Master Chemist from the Dawn of Life The amazing talents of cobalt in us Reflections on Myself Are the bacteria inhabiting my body also part of me? The Twilight of Iron New raw materials that think – and live Beyond Genes Why we are not slaves to our genes The Foundation of Things Why we must always search for the cause Voices of the Night Reflections on my life in science Acknowledgments About the Author About the Translator Index Gottfried Schatz was born on August 18, 1936, in Strem, a little Austrian village near the Hungarian border. He grew up in Graz, but spent the year 1952 as an American Field Service-sponsored highschool student in Rochester, NY. After receiving his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Graz in 1961, he joined Hans Tuppy at the Biochemistry Department of the University of Vienna where he began to study how cells build their organelles of respiration – the 'mitochondria'. From 1964 to 1966 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Efraim Racker at the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York on mitochondrial energy production. After a brief interlude back in Vienna, he emigrated to the USA in 1968 where he accepted a professorship at the Biochemistry Department at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Six years later, he moved to what was then the recently established Biozentrum of the University of Basel, which he directed from 1985 until 1987. His research dealt mostly with the mechanism of mitochondrial biogenesis and led to the discovery of mitochondrial DNA and of many key features of mitochondrial biogenesis. He has served as Secretary General of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and as member of many scientific advisory bodies around the world. His achievements have been honored with numerous prestigious national and international prizes, honorary doctorates, and admission to scientific academies, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the US National Academy. After his retirement in 2000, the Swiss Federal Government appointed him as president of the Swiss Science and Technology Council. After stepping down from this position in 2004, he became known to a wider public as an essayist and book author. During his years in Austria he also worked as a violinist with the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra, the Graz Opera and the Volksoper in Vienna. He and his Danish wife Merete have three children.