Title: Karl G. Zimmer Papers

Date/Date Range :   1933-1962

Extent: 2.0 linear feet

Abstract:

This collection houses the collected papers of German physicist Karl Guenter Zimmer.

Call number: MS-0839

Repository: University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN

Aquisition Information:

This collection is property of the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

Access Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Copyright:

The copyright interests in this collection remain with the creator. For more information, contact the Special Collections Library.

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of Item], Karl G. Zimmer Papers, MS-0839. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Special Collections Library.

Collection consists of two boxes.

Karl Guenter Zimmer was born in Germany in 1911. After obtaining his Ph.D degree in 1934, he began working as an advisor in radiotheraputic physics in a radiological hospital and as an employee of the Auer Society in order to support himself financially. He completed most of his theoretical work, however, at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut fuer Hirnforschung in Berlin. Comparatively early in his career, he, N.W. Timofeeff-Ressovsky, and M. Delbrueck published the "Green Pamphlet" (also known as the "Three-men-paper" ), which is now considered a major advance in the understanding of gene structure. Zimmer continued to work in Germany throughout World War II. After the war ended, he and several other scientists (including Timofeeff-Ressovsky and Alexander Catsch), were taken prisoner by the Russian Army and deported to the U.S.S.R., where they remained for the next ten years. After his release in 1955, Zimmer worked for the Swedish Forest Research Institute at Stockholm and for the German Nuclear Research Center at Karlsruhe, both of which benefited from his insights and from his ability to exploit modest means to their fullest that he had learned in the U.S.S.R. Karl Zimmer died in Germany on February 29, 1988.

This collection houses the collected papers of German physicist Karl Guenter Zimmer.

• Zimmer, Karl Guenter, 1911-1988.
• Radiobiology.