Science in troubled times
Mar. 23rd, 2025 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
injunjaneScience in times of war.
Somehow the first person I remember when I think of it is Karl Wulfert, a German naturalist who was living and working near Leipzig right from the start of WWII (1939) and through the whole war till the end of it.
For example, here's one of his papers "Die Rädertiere der deutschen Thermen" (Rotifers of German Thermal Springs) https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Lotos_88_0246-0262.pdf
Breslau (Wrocław, Poland) and Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Czechia) are yet German territory. On the map in the paper there aren't any borders (only German, Czech and Polish toponyms). The war however is at its top - ongoing Leningrad blockade, The Battle of Stalingrad (a turning point) is about to happen. More than a million people are being killed in Auschwitz, a complex of German concentration camps near the Polish town Oświęcim.
And a nice quiet German gentleman is traveling around the ponds and springs with a sampler and hydrobiological net, catching microscopic life and describing new species of animals.
I wonder how much thought he was giving to other things around him.
Somehow the first person I remember when I think of it is Karl Wulfert, a German naturalist who was living and working near Leipzig right from the start of WWII (1939) and through the whole war till the end of it.
For example, here's one of his papers "Die Rädertiere der deutschen Thermen" (Rotifers of German Thermal Springs) https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Lotos_88_0246-0262.pdf
Breslau (Wrocław, Poland) and Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Czechia) are yet German territory. On the map in the paper there aren't any borders (only German, Czech and Polish toponyms). The war however is at its top - ongoing Leningrad blockade, The Battle of Stalingrad (a turning point) is about to happen. More than a million people are being killed in Auschwitz, a complex of German concentration camps near the Polish town Oświęcim.
And a nice quiet German gentleman is traveling around the ponds and springs with a sampler and hydrobiological net, catching microscopic life and describing new species of animals.
I wonder how much thought he was giving to other things around him.
