Carl Neuberg Papers , American Philosophical Society

A pioneer biochemist, Carl Neuberg (1877-1956) spent over thirty years of his productive career as a professor at the University of Berlin (1903-1937) and as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes of Biochemistry and Experimental Therapy. His varied research interests resulted in important contributions to the understanding of fermentation processes, solubility and transport phenomena in cells, the chemistry of carbohydrates, sugars, enzymes, and amino acids, and photochemistry. Neuberg was forced out of his position after the Nazi rise to power, and taking refuge in the United States. For the last several years of his life, he worked at New York University.

The Neuberg collection consists of correspondence, lab notebooks, documents, photographs, and reprints, nearly all dating from after Neuberg's departure from Germany in 1940. The correspondence documents Neuberg's late-career work and the contacts he developed with American chemical manufacturers and industries involved in fermentation, as well as the burgeoning post-war relationship between scientific research and the federal dollar. Files for the American Cancer Society, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Public Health Service in particular contain useful information for study of the politics and mechanics of government grants.

Background note

Carl Neuberg, ca.1950

To say that Carl Neuberg (1877-1956) was a pioneer in biochemistry is to understate the case: he coined the term. Born in Hanover, Germany, on July 29, 1877, to the Jewish merchant, Julius Sandel Neuberg and his wife Alma (Niemann), Neuberg studied chemistry under Virchow at the University of Berlin, receiving his Dr. Phil. in 1900. Appointed to the Pathological Institute of the University, Neuberg rose through the academic ranks from Privatdozent in 1903 to Titularprofessor (1906), before becoming head of the Tierphysiologisches Institut at the University from 1909-1913 and simultaneously full professor at the Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule in Berlin.

The major achievements of Neuberg's early career included the elucidation of solubility and transport phenomena in cells, the chemistry of carbohydrates and sugars, photochemistry, and the discovery of the different forms of fermentation. As early as 1912, he also devoted attention to the chemistry of amino acids and enzymes, and in 1916, he discovered hydrotropy, which he considered one of his most important discoveries. Neuberg contributed materially to the German war effort in 1914-1918 by developing the process of manufacturing glycerol and substitutes through the fermentation of sugar.

Neuberg's influence on the emergence of the field of biochemistry was profound. He helped establish the Biochemische Zeitschrift in 1906 and edited 278 volumes over the next thirty years. The nomenclature in the field bears similar traces of Neuberg's ingenuity, including the terms phosphorylation, dismutation, desmolysis, and co-enzyme.

Neuberg's increasing status during the 1910s and 1920s brought him a steady increase in administrative power. In 1913, he was recognized with an appointment as Second Director at the prestigious new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Experimental Therapy, headed by August von Wasserman, and his promotion to Professor (1916) and full Professor (1919) at the University of Berlin followed in short order. Neuberg accrued a range of other responsibilities at the same time as he became Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry in 1920, of the Institute for Experimental Therapy upon Wasserman's death in 1923, and adding the directorship of the Forschungsstelle des Deutschen Rechies für Chemie des Tabaks in 1928.

With the rise to power of the Nazis, Neuberg initially believed his services during the First World War would afford him some protection. In 1937, however, he was driven out of his posts by the Nazis. Only two days before the war broke out, a friend in military circles issued Neuberg a pass to leave, with the intention of assuming a position offered to him at the University of Jerusalem. Landing in Amsterdem, he worked to raise money for his passage, and with the assistance of his old colleague Claude Fromageot, reached Palestine. Neuberg resumed his monumental wartime peregrinations in 1941, and a dramatic passage through Iraq, Iran, India, and New Guinea, he arrived at New York University in February 1941,with little more than a pair of valises to his name.

Already nearing the standard age of retirement, Neuberg lamented that he had arrived "ten years too late to find a proper position" in the United States, and certainly he fared poorly relative other displaced scholars, such as Max Bergmann and ErwinChargaff. The miniscule laboratory he occupied at the university from 1941-1950 and his inadequate pay were inadequate to support a substantial research program. "Lieber Herr College Thomas," he wrote to an old colleague in Germany, "Sie sehen in Amerika ist fuer unsereinen nicht das Paradies.... Jetzt bin ich eine alter immigrierter Hund, der nur mit einem Handkoefferchen angekommen ist, Emigrant bin ich eigentlich nicht, sondern nur einfach herausgeworfen." To his old colleague Maria Kobel he complained "Der Titel Research-Professor ist eine Verbraemung des Nichts."

Neuberg nevertheless succeeded in securing important contacts with the pharmaceutical and fermentation industries over the next decade, and like many of his peers, his late career maps out the increasing role played by the federal government and industry in the post-war years. In 1950, he spent a year as visiting lecturer at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and he traveled to Germany in 1952 to deliver lectures on biochemistry, receiving honorary degrees and awards along the way.

Over the course of his career, Neuberg contributed to over 900 publications, including work on the chemistry of sugars, fermentation, enzymes, and amino acids. He considered his most important work to lie in the discovery of carboxylase, the different forms of fermentation, the artificial production of glycerol, and the discovery of pyro-, meta- and polyphosphatases. His work on solubility and transport phenomena had broad applicability in the life sciences, including to agriculture, nutrition, cytology, and oncology.

Neuberg was the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Breslau, Danzig, Palermo, Edinburgh, and Berlin, and he was recipient of Emil Fischer Scheele, Berzelius, Delbrück, Leblanc, and Pasteur medals. He died at home in New York in 1956.

Scope and content

The disruptions to the life and career of the biochemist, Carl Neuberg, exacted the toll on his papers. The 10.75 linear feet of correspondence, research notes, and photographs that survives is heavily skewed toward the last fifteen years of a long and distinguished career, representing the period between 1942 and 1956 when he was employed at New York University and in retirement. Despite the relative paucity of material for earlier periods of Neuberg's life, the collection offers interesting insights into the experiences and struggles of a Jewish German émigreé scientist to establish himself in American academia.

With the exception of correspondence with his friend Kurt Jacobson in Portugal (5 folders, 1929-1956), a few German industries (4 folders, ca. 1916-1945), the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and Institutes (5 folders, ca. 1913-1952), and the German War Department (2 folders, 1916) the collection has little to offer for Neuberg's pre-war years. Some of post-war correspondence, however, reveals some of the trauma he experienced, and some of his hardships leading up. The letters between Neuberg and Karl Thomas ("Briefe nach 1945") and Kurt Jacobson provide details on Neuberg's escape from Berlin and flight through Palestine before arriving in New York. The letters with Thomas, in particular, give a spare, but moving account of the hardships both chemists faced during and after the war, as Thomas adjusted to life in the new Germany and Neuberg to life in America. Neuberg's impression of American science was unflattering, reflecting his frustrations:

In Amerika bekannt zu sein, bedeutet viel: denn unsereangelsaechsischen Vettern lassen die Wissenschaft, soweit es irgend moeglichist, nur bei sich beginnen und eine mich am meisten belustigende Phrase ist,dass wenn sei sich auf eine zentral-europaeische Veroeffentlichung unbedingtberuffen muessen "now confirmed in this country," oder wenn sei schreiben "atfirst published in this country anno..." Es ist im Grunde eine hinterhaeltigeMethode.

Approximately 35 folders document Neuberg's contacts with industry in the United States, including Anheuser-Busch (1942-1956); Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Co. (1942-1953); Federal Yeast Corporation (1943-1956); Hoffmann-La Roche (1944-1954); Lederle Laboratories (1943-1949); Monsanto Chemical Co. (1942-1948); National Grain Yeast Corp. (1942-1949); National Sugar Refining Co. (1944-1952); Rohm and Haas Co. (1942-1948); E. R. Squibb and Sons (1948-1953); and Standard Oil Co. (1946-1948).

Neuberg's continuing research in cell chemistry, sustained by small grants from public and private sources, eventually generated some support from the United States government. The files on government-sponsored research contain a wealth of information -- proposals, contracts, progress reports, and letters -- highlighting the growing link between the life sciences, government, and the military during the late 1940s and early 1950. Of particular interest in this regard are the materials relating to: the American Cancer Society (5 folders, 1949-1956); the Nutrition Foundation (1943-1945); the Rockefeller Foundation (1941); U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (3 folders, 1949-1953; grant applications and approval of projects on solubility and metabolism of soil metals); U.S. Department of Agriculture (2 folders, 1944-1950); Office of Naval Research (4 folders, 1950-1955, proposals, reports, renewals, and contracts on cell transport projects); and the U.S. Public Health Service (8 folders, 1943-1955, on grants for phosphorous compounds and solubility in cells).

Throughout his life in the United States, Neuberg remained attached to European science and to international causes in science. In addition to his contacts made through the American Society of European Chemists (1 folder, 1948-1954), which he helped found, Neuberg maintained fairly extensive contact with scientists from other countries, including Japan. His correspondence with prominent German chemists (in German) is informative on postwar German science, issues surrounding the intellectual migration, and Neuberg's misfortunes in particular.


Series I. Correspondence	ca.1880-1956	9 linear feet
Series II. Notebooks	1933-1955	1.5 linear feet
Series III. Miscellaneous	1915-1956	0.25 linear feet

Administrative information

Restrictions

None.

Provenance

Gift of Carl Neuberg's daughter, Irene Forrest, June 1980.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Carl Neuberg Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued by rsc, 2002.

Other finding aids

Also described in Lily E. Kay, Molecules, Cells, and Life(Philadelphia, 1989).

Additional information

Separated material

Neuberg's reprints and a collection of books have been transferredto the Department of Printed Materials.