*September 4, 1906 Berlin, Germany - †March 9, 1981 Pasadena, CA, USA
 

Max Delbrück is one of the most famous natural scientists (physics and biology) of the twentieth century.

His scientific interests changed several times in the course of his career. In the 1920s, he began studying astronomy in Göttingen, then changed his major to theoretical physics.

As a postdoctorand he continued his studies in England, Switzerland, and Denmark and ultimately moved to Berlin in 1932. There he became interested in biology and co-authored an important scientific paper on mutagenesis. In 1937, he moved to the United States and began to focus on molecular genetics.

In the early 1950s, his research interest again shifted to sensory physiology.

On 22 June 1962, Max Delbrück founded the Institute for Genetics at the University of Cologne, with Niels Bohr as speaker.

In 1969, Max Delbrück was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine together with Alfred D. Hershey and Salvador E. Luria “for their discoveries of the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses.”

*7 February 1887, Vienna, – †16 September 1960, Forte die Marmi, Italy

Leo Spitzer was a scholar of Romance philology and literary theory. He came from an Austrian Jewish family and is considered a proponent of stylistics. He published on a wide range of topics in linguistics as well as literary and cultural history.

A student of Wilhelm Meyer-Lübkes, Leo Spitzer earned his doctoral degree in 1910 and initially worked as a lecturer at the University of Vienna (1913). His career was interrupted during World War I, when he worked at the Austrian Censorship Office. In 1920 he went to Bonn. In 1925 he became a full professor for Romance philology in Marburg before succeeding Etienne Lorck at the University of Cologne in 1930. In Cologne, he was one of the founders of the Portuguese-Brazilian Institute (1932).

After the National Socialists took power, he was dismissed from the University because of his Jewish heritage on 7 April 1933. That year, he emigrated to Istanbul, where he established a chair for European philology and became the head of the University’s language school.

Unlike other German scholars who had also come to Istanbul and stayed there during the war, Spitzer was able to emigrate to the United States in 1936 and was offered a chair in Romance philology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

In 1949, he published his avant-garde work “American Advertising Explained as Popular Art.” This book won great acclaim in Europe, particularly in Italy.

In 1955, Spitzer received the Antonio-Feltrinelli-Prize, and in 1959 a former student of his, Hugo Friedrich, published a volume of more than 900 pages containing a collection of Spitzer’s papers in five languages (German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English). The work was published at the University of Cologne and financially supported by the German Research Foundation DFG.

In 1946, Spitzer was invited to return to his position at the University of Cologne.

*11 October 1881, Prague, at the time Austria-Hungary – †19 April 1973, Orinda (near Berkeley), CA, USA

Hans Kelsen is considered one of the most influential legal scholars of the twentieth century. He made outstanding contributions to the fields of public law, international law, and legal theory.

Kelsen studied law at the University of Vienna and completed his Habilitation in public law and philosophy of law in 1911.

In 1919 he became a full professor of public and administrative law at the University of Vienna, where he developed the Journal of Public Law and became its first editor. In March of that year, he was commissioned to draft a constitution for the new Austrian state. The Austrian Constitutional Assembly ratified the Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz on 1 October 1920. It was not, as many have claimed, written by Spitzer alone, but he played a key role in its formulation. The 1929 version of the so called B-VG strengthened the position of the federal president and reorganized the Constitutional Tribunal. It is still in effect to this day, with modifications to accommodate Austria’s joining of the EU.

In 1930 Kelsen became a professor of international law at the University of Cologne. When the National Socialists took power in 1933, he was dismissed from his post and moved to Geneva, where he taught international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies between 1934 and 1940.

From 1936 to 1938, he was briefly a professor at the German University in Prague. However, he returned to Geneva, where he stayed until 1940.