Evidence for linear electron transport and light-harvesting pigments of photosystems LY3009104 in vivo I and II. Plant Physiol 67:17–20PubMedCrossRef”
“When I was asked by my colleague Govindjee to write for Photosynthesis Research a few more personal than scientific lines I hesitated but, after some reflection, I complied. What guided me towards research, towards photosynthesis? The answer, too simple to convince, is naively true: it was curiosity, but, more important, it was the opportunity given to me by others, by my peers, to learn. Saxonian beginnings In my life I was

much influenced by others although I am, admittedly, a little stubborn, perhaps not easy to Selleck KU-60019 influence. Prominent and first in a line of able educators to whom

I am indebted was an aunt, Johanna Scheibe, a teacher of biology, who had an independent mind. During the Nazi time she had been suspected of Soviet sympathies and was threatened in her career. Her nickname was ‘Red Hanne’. Later, under the Soviet rule, she was fired as director of a High School for her refusal to join a Soviet-German friendship organization. Next I am very grateful to the teachers of the Vitzthum Gymnasium in Dresden, in the free state of Saxony, for 4 years of schooling. ‘Non scholae sed vitae discimus’: It took me many years to understand that this is not an empty phrase: we really learnt there for life, not for the school which was H 89 research buy destroyed in the horrible bombing of the night of February 13/14, 1945. Months later, after the end of the Third Reich, teachers

who had survived the Dresden catastrophe were fired by the newly formed so-called anti-fascist administration. Shortly before the end of the war, the Russian army had occupied the village where the Heber family had owned a farm since several generations. After the chaos left by a clash between Ergoloid German and Russian troops which left two Russian tanks burning behind our farm, property lost its meaning. Since times immemorial, armies had lived from the lands they had occupied. This fate now met the village where I, a 14 year old boy, became a horse thief after our farm had been stripped clean of animals and other possessions. The horse, stolen by a Silesian refugee boy and me, was of Russian or Polish origin. It was joined after some weeks by an ox which my mother had obtained from a Russian soldier in a legally doubtful business exchange after mixing two bottles of vodka and one bottle of water. The Russian had insisted on three bottles as the price of the ox. This unequal pair, the horse and the ox, continued my education during the three following years. I learnt much from them. The horse was social, diligent and a little stupid, the ox egotistic, lazy and intelligent. My job was to feed them and to force them to work. That was not easy because the ox was clever.