Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 194-195. (Budapest, 2006)

TANULMÁNYOK — ARTICLES - ELEK, Gábor - MÜLLER, Miklós: Ervin Bauer as pathologist

ERWIN BAUER AS PATHOLOGIST GÁBOR ELEK-MIKLÓS MÜLLER Introduction Ervin (Erwin) Bauer (1890 - 1938) is a major figure in the history of science, one of the founders of theoretical biology. Due to the historical upheavals during the first half of the 20

n century, he is little known outside Hungary, his native country, and Russia where he spent the final years of his life and published his seminal monograph Theoretical Biology in Russian in 1935 (Bauer 1935; Elek 1976). He perished in Stalin's purges in 1938. In this book and its earlier versions Bauer attempted to develop an all encompassing, consistent theory of life, starting from first principles. He formulated the fundamental thesis of "permanent disaequilibrium of the living matteran idea that is still relevant today. While specific aspects of his theory became largely superseded by later developments in biology, his work stands out as a major achievement of scientific thought. It is forever a loss to science that due to the situation in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s it did not become widely known when it was published and could have had a major impact on the subsequent development of biological sciences. Bauer's complicated and tragic life, as well as his work as a biologist have received attention elsewhere.

1 These studies focus primarily on his path toward the development of theoretical biology and pay little attention to his earlier studies. While it is known that in the beginning of his career he worked as a pathologist from 1911 through 1919, this period is rarely discussed in any detail. It is amazing how much work was he able to accomplish under the difficult conditions of these years that were certainly not conducive to sustained scientific efforts. His early publications reveal a specialist with keen insight into the implica1 A brief summary of biographical sources on Bauer's life is provided in the following. The most comprehensive biography was written by Tokin (1963). Shnol' (LUuo/ib 2001) contains an interesting chapter on Bauer. The 2002 reprint of Bauer's Theoretical Biology (sec Bauer, 1935) contains a revised biography by Golikov and Mikhail Bauer. A recent article by one of the authors of this paper brought the information up to date (Müller, 2005). More details for the period discussed here, including Bauer's marriage with Margit Kaffka are in Bodnár's (2001) biography of Kaffka (see especially pp. 66-84). Kaffka's letters published by Rolla (1983) and Bauer's letters to Kaffka (a few published by Lenkei [1990] but most of them unpublished and kept in the Levelestár of the Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár) contain numerous references to various aspects of Bauer's work in Temesvár. No similar information is available for the period after the death of his wife. Here we had to rely on documents preserved in the archives of the Medical Faculty of the University of Budapest (now Semmelweis University, Budapest). The holdings of these archives are cataloged in Szögi (1982) and Molnár and Szögi (2002).