Die Begründer der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Stiftung

According to a senior citizen of a trading company in Hamburg, if “he is too stupid for sugar, let him study," Obviously, such an environment did not particularly appreciate science. Nevertheless, Senator Werner von Melle succeeded in collecting a sum of almost four million marks from many foresighted Hamburg citizens, so that the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung (Hamburg Scientific Foundation) was able to come into being on 12 April 1907. This first volume of the series "Patrons for Science" honours in short biographies all personalities who have been involved in the foundation's founding phase, either financially or through their participation on the board of trustees. Many of them have become well-known far beyond Hamburg, others have been completely forgotten. The book is introduced by the essay "Current Past" which embeds the founders of the foundation in the cultural and scientific-political context of Hamburg around the turn of the century

From working collections to the World Germplasm Project: agricultural modernization and genetic conservation at the Rockefeller Foundation

This paper charts the history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s participation in the collection and long-term preservation of genetic diversity in crop plants from the 1940s through the 1970s. In the decades following the launch of its agricultural program in Mexico in 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation figured prominently in the creation of world collections of key economic crops. Through the efforts of its administrators and staff, the foundation subsequently parlayed this experience into a leadership role in international efforts to conserve so-called plant genetic resources. Previous accounts of the Rockefeller Foundation’s interventions in international agricultural development have focused on the outcomes prioritized by foundation staff and administrators as they launched assistance programs and especially their characterization of the peoples and ‘‘problems’’ they encountered abroad. This paper highlights instead how foundation administrators and staff responded to a newly emergent international agricultural concern—the loss of crop genetic diversity. Charting the foundation’s responses to this concern, which developed only after agricultural modernization had begun and was understood to be produced by the successes of the foundation’s own agricultural assistance programs, allows for greater interrogation of how the foundation understood and projected its central position in international agricultural research activities by the 1970s.Research for this article was supported in part by a grant-in-aid from the Rockefeller Archive Center

Environmental movements in space-time: the Czech and Slovak republics from Stalinism to post-socialism

To demonstrate the role of space and time in social movements, the paper analyses the evolution and context of the environmental movement in the Czech and Slovak republics from 1948 to 1998. It shows that the movement's identity was formed under socialism and that political opportunity and resource availability changed markedly over time, as did its organisational and spatial structure. The movement played a significant part in the collapse of the socialist regime, but in the 1990s was marginalised in the interests of building a market economy and an independent Slovakia. Nevertheless a diverse and flexible range of groups existed by the late 1990s. The successive space-times allow analysis of the multiple and changing variables that influence the geography of social movements

Biotechnology and the Politics of Truth : From the Green Revolution to an Evergreen Revolution

This paper investigates why and how issues around the diffusion of GM technologies and products to developing countries have become so central to a debate which has shifted away from technical issues of cost-benefit optimisation in a context of uniform mass production and consumption in the North, to the moral case for GM crops to feed the hungry and aid ‘development’ in the South. Using comparison between agricultural biotechnology and the ‘Green Revolution’ as a cross cutting theme, the contributions of this paper are threefold. Firstly, by analysing biotechnology as a set of overlapping frames within a discursive formation, four frames are identified which summarise key challenges presented by biotechnology era. Secondly, the use of Foucault's concept of bio-power to synthesise key themes from the frame analysis illuminates the ‘revolutionary’ nature of the biotech revolution. Thirdly, the potential of actor-network theory to provide a tools for the empirical study of processes of (re)negotiation of nature/society relations in the context of agricultural biotechnology controversies is explored

Keeping secrets from parents: Advantages and disadvantages of secrecy in adolescence.

Item does not contain fulltex

Die Begründer der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Stiftung

"Für Zucker ist er zu dumm, der kann studieren!", so wird die Äußerung der Seniorin eines Hamburger Handelshauses kolportiert. Offensichtlich brachte ein solches Umfeld der Wissen­schaft nicht gerade besondere Wertschätzung entgegen. Dennoch gelang es Senator Wer­ner von Melle, bei vielen voraus­schau­enden Hamburgern eine Summe von knapp vier Millionen Mark einzusammeln, so dass am 12. April 1907 die Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung ins Leben treten konnte. Der "Basisband" der Reihe "Mäzene für Wissenschaft" würdigt in Kurzbiographien alle Persönlichkeiten, die sich in der Gründungsphase der Stiftung und in den ersten Jahren für diese finanziell engagiert haben; außerdem werden die Mitglieder ihres ersten Kuratoriums porträtiert. Viele der Begründer sind weit über Hamburg hinaus be­kannt geworden, andere vollständig in Vergessenheit geraten. Eingeleitet wird das Buch durch den Essay "Aktuelle Vergangenheit", der die Begründer der Stiftung in den kulturellen und wissen­schafts­politischen Kontext Hamburgs um die Jahrhundertwende einbettet. Jetzt neu in der 3., komplett überarbeiteten und ergänzten Auflage.According to a senior citizen of a trading company in Hamburg, if “he is too stupid for sugar, let him study," Obviously, such an environment did not particularly appreciate science. Nevertheless, Senator Werner von Melle succeeded in collecting a sum of almost four million marks from many foresighted Hamburg citizens, so that the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung (Hamburg Scientific Foundation) was able to come into being on 12 April 1907. This first volume of the series "Patrons for Science" honours in short biographies all personalities who have been involved in the foundation\u27s founding phase, either financially or through their participation on the board of trustees. Many of them have become well-known far beyond Hamburg, others have been completely forgotten. The book is introduced by the essay "Current Past" which embeds the founders of the foundation in the cultural and scientific-political context of Hamburg around the turn of the century. The previous issues - the 2nd, completely revised edition (2015)(dx.doi.org/10.15460/HUP.MFW.1.17) and the 1st edition (2007)( http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/purl/HamburgUP_MfW01_Begruender) - are still digitally freely available