Chargaff, Erwin

One of the foremost contributors to a modern understanding of the nucleic acids, Erwin Chargaff was born in Czernowitz, Austria on August 11, 1905. After receiving a doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1928, he accepted a position at Yale University, where he became the Milton Campbell Research Fellow in Organic Chemistry from 1928 to 1930. From Yale, Chargaff returned to Europe for four years, spending 1930-1933 as Assistant in Charge of Chemistry for the Department of Bacteriology and Public Health at the University of Berlin and 1933-1934 as Research Associate at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

After his early wanderings, Chargaff settled down to spend his most productive and creative years in association with Columbia University. Starting as a Research Associate in the Department of Biochemistry in 1935, he climbed the academic ladder to Assistant Professor in 1938 and Professor in 1952, eventually becoming departmental chair (1970-1974), and receiving Professor Emeritus (1974).

After reading Oswald Avery's seminal 1944 paper identifying DNA as the hereditary material, Chargaff reoriented his laboratory to the study of the structure and function of nucleic acids and their components using the new chromatographic techniques developed by John Martin and Richard Synge. By 1950, in research funded in part by the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the United States Public Health Service, and the American Cancer Society, Chargaff made a discovery of critical importance, regardless of the source, the amounts of adenine and thymine were equal, as were the amounts of cytosine and guanine. The discovery of this distinctive pattern of base-pairing regularities in DNA (Chargaff's "complementarity relationships") provided a compelling rejection of the tetranucleotide hypothesis and demonstrated the potential for the existence of a large number of species of DNA, however Chargaff made little headway in unraveling the causes of base regularities. In later years, he argued that he had planted the seeds for the double helix in the minds of Watson and Crick during a luncheon meeting in May 1952 to discuss his results, however Chargaff himself failed to make the connections between these regularities and base pairing. In later work, however, he was credited with providing the first demonstrations of hypochromicity, hyperchromicity, and the denaturation of a DNA, and his lab also conducted important research on blood coagulation, lipids and lipoproteins, the metabolism of amino acids and inositol, and the biosynthesis of phosphotransferases.

From the late 1950s, Chargaff grew increasingly disillusioned with molecular biology, the field that he had helped found, lamenting what he perceived as the subordination of biochemistry to molecular pursuits, famously accusing molecular biologists of practicing biochemistry without a license. In later life, he became an outspoken critic of the newer biotechnologies involving cloning, genetic manipulation, and gene transfer, decrying the poverty of bioethical standards in the field and claiming that molecular biology was "running riot and doing things that can never be justified." He spoke and wrote extensively against the use of microbiology in genetic engineering, primarily for a European market, describing himself as "the unwilling cofounder of a science that [he] abhorred." During these years, Chargaff also returned to his youthful interest in language and satire, in particular the works of Karl Kraus, the Viennese satirist.

Throughout his career, Chargaff regularly served as visiting lecturer and professor at other institutions, including the Wenner Gren Center at the University of Stockholm (1949); several universities in Japan (1958); the Universities of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Recife in Brazil (1959); and the Collège de France, where he held the Albert Einstein Chair (1965). He gave the Plenary Congress Lecture at the International Biochemistry Congress in Vienna (1958); the Harvey Society Lecture (1956); the Jesup Lectures at Columbia University (1959); and the Miescher Memorial Lecture in Basel (1969). He was on the Committee on Growth of the National Research Council (1952-1954), and he was also on the Advisory Council on Biology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1958-1967). His numerous awards and honors include the Pasteur Medal (1949), the Carl Neuberg Medal (1958), the Société de Chimie Biologique Medal (1961), the Charles Leopold Mayer Prize (1963), the H.P. Heineken Prize (1964), the Bertner Foundation Award (1965), the Gregor Mendel Medal (1973), the National Medal of Science (1974), the New York Academy of Medicine Medal (1980), and Columbia University's Distinguished Service Award (1982). He was also awarded an honorary ScD from Columbia University (1976) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel (1976).

Chargaff also was awarded numerous awards and honors for his work as an essayist and ethicist during his later years, including the Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Osterreich (1990), Osterreichische Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst (1994), Preis der Stadt Wien für Publizistik (1994), Friedrick Märker-Preis für Essayisten (2000) and the Ehrenmedaille der Bundeshauptstadt Wien in Gold (2001).

Chargaff has been a member of the editorial boards for Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Columbia University's Forum, and American Chemical Society Monographs, as well as a member of the advisory board for Experimental Cell Research . He was a member of the Royal Swedish Physiographic Society (1959), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1961), the National Academy of Sciences (1965), the American Philosophical Society (1979), and many other professional organizations.

Chargaff published almost 500 articles in English, German, French and Italian. Most were published during his years at Columbia, some as collaborations with his students and colleagues. He also published several books during this time, including three volumes called the Nucleic Acids in 1955 and 1960 with J. N. Davidson; Essays on Nucleic Acids in 1963; and Voices in the Labyrinth: Dialogues Around the Study of Nature in 1977. His autobiographical Heraclitean Fire was published in 1978. In his later years, he published numerous essays, primarily written in German, and frequently made television and radio appearances in Europe, arguing against the use of molecular biology in genetic engineering.

Chargaff married Vera Broido in 1928, with whom he had one child, Thomas, and became an American citizen in 1940. After a falling out with the department at Columbia following his retirement to emeritus status in 1974, Chargaff moved his laboratory to Columbia's affiliate, Roosevelt Hospital, where he continued to work until 1992. He died on June 20, 2002 at the age of 96.

From the guide to the Erwin Chargaff Papers, 1929-1992, (American Philosophical Society)