Lindau and the Zeitgeist the Annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Have Evolved Over the Years, Reflecting Changes in Both Science and Society
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OUTLOOK SCIENCE MASTERCLASS s E g MA I /GETTY /GETTY s IFE PICTURE IFE L IME T // s WALTER SANDER WALTER Count Lennart Bernadotte (C) addresses physicists Werner Heisenberg (L), Edward Purcell (3L), Isidor I. Rabi (6R), Emilio Segre (5R), Paul Dirac (2R) and Gustav Hertz (R) at a meeting on Lindau (1962). timEliNE Lindau and the zeitgeist The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have evolved over the years, reflecting changes in both science and society. BY JOHN GALBRAITH SIMMONS prize “a pain in the neck” and molecular biolo- physicians Franz Karl Hein and Gustav Parade gist Max Delbrück considered rejecting it for decided to organize a meeting in Lindau, a tiny THE ROAD FROM StOCKHOLM... being a pointless distraction. But most accept picturesque island-city on Lake Constance, The Nobel Laureate Meetings at Lindau owe the invasive downside of celebrity as a price nestled in the southern state of Bavaria. They their cachet first and foremost to the prestige worth paying. had two aims: to inform doctors of the latest of the Nobel prize. This prestige, in turn, has The upsides to receiving a Nobel prize are medical developments, and to promote Ger- much to do with the revolutionary advances many and diverse. At one end of the spec- many’s reintegration into the wider scientific in science that were afoot when the prize was trum, some recipients are happy to simply community. first awarded in 1901. Quantum concepts were take advantage of the enhanced opportunities Hein and Parade believed that the key to about to dethrone classical physics. Chemis- to continue or broaden their laboratory work. achieving these goals was to reach out to Nobel try, closely allied with atomic physics, would At the other end, some scientists use the Nobel laureates. To this end they enlisted the help of soon extend deep into biology. Major advances prize as a pulpit to discuss important causes. Lennart Bernadotte, who owned the nearby in all scientific disciplines would transfigure Most lie in-between. garden island of Mainau. As an aristocrat medicine. Which leads to Lindau, where these char- related to the Swedish royal family, Bernadotte The Nobel also owes its status to scrupu- acteristics of dedication and curiosity, not to had access to the Nobel committees and was lous selection, with an emphasis on rewarding mention more ideological viewpoints, are evi- able to gain their unofficial support. breakthrough discoveries, from the 1901 phys- dent each year; putting scientific advances in At the first meeting in June 1951, seven lau- ics prize for the discovery of X-rays up to the context in our ever changing world, and help- reates lectured 400 physicians and researchers 2009 physiology or medicine award for learn- ing them to confer, as Alfred Nobel once said, on current scientific concerns. William Mur- ing how hromosomes are protected by telom- “the greatest benefit on mankind.” phy, from the United States, discussed perni- eres and the enzyme telomerase. Now, some cious anaemia. Otto Warburg described his 540 awards later, it is clear that the Nobel prizes …tO LINDau… theory of photosynthesis. Gerhard Domagk, have also become a touchstone for the public’s Occupied and fragmented, post-war Germany who had developed the first sulfa drug, an early awareness of the importance of science. was suffering from the scientific brain drain antimicrobial, but who had been forbidden by Not all Nobelists are happy recipients. Physi- that began with the Third Reich. In 1950, to the Nazis to collect his award in 1939, talked cist Richard Feynman, for example, called the help jump start the intellectual recovery, local about treatments for tuberculosis. S14 | NATURE | VOL 467 | 14 OCTOBer 2010 SCIENCE MASTERCLASS OUTLOOK The meeting was widely covered by the Ger- The 1990s and the end of the cold war, century. They were not short of expertise. man press, and soon turned into an annual although not explicitly acknowledged at “We received advice from the laureates event. Young scientists, initially students from Lindau, signalled a general move towards themselves on how to chart a new course,” the nearby University of Freiburg, started to closer and more relaxed international rela- recalls Wolfgang Schürer who, as chairman attend, and gradually the meeting evolved to tions. But the meeting remained essentially of the board of the new Foundation Lindau focus on the interaction between the laureates regional, with most foreign students attending Nobelprizewinners Meetings, helped oversee and the younger scientists. simply because they were studying at German the entire process. “Out of about a dozen very Lindau attracted quite a following. Many universities. “It was a very difficult task to open concrete, very specific recommendations from Nobel laureates attended even when not giv- Lindau to the world,” said Ludwig Feinende- the laureate community, we embarked upon a ing formal lectures. Physicists Paul Dirac, Otto gen, a physician and researcher in nuclear rediscovery and redesign.” Hahn and Werner Heisenberg were regular fix- medicine who joined the Lindau Council in Globalization facilitated this revision, accel- tures for decades. Willis Lamb, the American 1979 and later served as its vice president. The erated by the internet. Arno Penzias, who physicist who discovered the electron Lamb interactive aims and informal nature of the shared the 1978 prize in physics while work- shift and shared the physics prize in 1955, first meeting worked against funding opportuni- ing for Bell Laboratories, was inspirational in attended in 1959 and was planning to attend ties, he explained. starting the live video stream of lectures and, his 20th meeting a few weeks before his death There were some successes. By 1998, the ultimately, the blogging and extensive social in 2008. Nobel Foundation in Stockholm had begun to networking that characterized the meeting in Although Lindau lectures were scientific, appreciate its informal relationship with the 2010. At the same time, the official language during those first few decades the meetings Lindau meeting, and that same year the US was changed from German to English. tended to reverberate at the interface of sci- Aaron Klug, the 1982 chemistry laure- gs ence and society. Early discussions on the ate, is credited with suggesting a partnership development of CERN — the powerful coop- strategy, whereby the Lindau Council estab- erative European particle-physics project — lishes a network of academic and govern- took place in Lindau during the 1950s. The ment institutions to help identify and nomi- creeping shadow of the East-West divide and nate young researchers, including advanced the cold war could be seen in 1953 when, in students, doctoral candidates and postdocs. the wake of a bloody uprising in East Berlin, The council signs a Memorandum of Under- ,C//LINDAU LAUREATE MEETIN LAUREATE ,C//LINDAU East-German scientists were not permitted to standing (MOU) with each institution and a g attend — a state of affairs that would endure review panel then selects from the nominees. for decades. “We wanted to establish credentials and FLEMMIN Indeed, the nuclear arms race had special assure our partners around the world,” explains importance because many Nobelists had con- Schürer, “that we want to sustain this effort for tributed to the advances in nuclear physics decades to come.” Ten years later, the Lindau — if not to the development of atomic weap- Council has signed more than 200 MOUs ons directly. At the Lindau meeting in 1955, worldwide resulting, in 2010, in a record the year after the detonation of the hydrogen attendance of 61 laureates and 650 young bomb on Bikini Atoll, American geneticist researchers from 72 countries. Hermann Muller gave a lecture discussing Updated and recast, Lindau meetings still the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile, several The Polonaise is the traditional dance. follow a scientific agenda that has an ancillary laureates, including Otto Hahn and quantum social context. No fewer than five Nobelists at physicist Max Born, gathered outside the lec- Department of Energy sponsored attendance the 2010 meeting addressed the challenges to ture hall to create an outright pacifist state- for a group of young American researchers. the environment. The meeting ended with a ment. Count Bernadotte read it aloud on the Nevertheless, at the turn of the millennium, panel on energy and sustainability. There were island of Mainau at the traditional close of the the meeting was chronically underfunded and also discussions on the prospects for CERN meetings, and the 12 laureates present (plus somewhat lacking focus. “It became different, and a debate about the future of medicine. another 40 later on) signed it. Although the less serious over the years,” said Anders Bárány, But the real focus of the meetings at Lindau Russell-Einstein Manifesto, published a few a physicist and former deputy director of the are the young researchers. Edmond Fischer, days earlier, became the foundation document Nobel Museum in Stockholm who is involved who shared the 1992 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the anti-nuclear Pugwash movement, the in preserving and referencing the meeting’s or Physiology and has regularly attended since Mainau Declaration underscored the intense records. 1993, thinks it should be called a “meeting of concern at the highest echelons of science. Bárány, whose grandfather Robert won a the students”, not prizewinners. “They are the Lindau has been the launch pad for other Nobel prize in 1914, attended his first meet- principal component of the meeting. We are significant issues over the years. For example, ing in 2000. He recalls dancing the traditional coming just for that, to introduce students, to in 1968, Franz König, then Archbishop of Polonaise, partnered with a young green- make connections, speak among them, trust Vienna, issued a statement authorized by the haired woman. He asked: “Are you interested one another and speak the same language, the Pope that the Catholic Church would consider in physics?” She was not.