Born in Künzelsau - in the midst of the puritan Swabian tradition - the slender, willowy, smiling "Schwabe" was modest and frugal with himself, but very generous to others. His openness and generosity extended of course and, in particular, to Science. Combined with a forthright but always courteous demeanour, this generosity was the extraordinary property that made Karl Bauer an institution at the FLI. He could be approached any time with questions on methods, on scientific plans, on history of science and more. Particulary the PhD students, postdocs amd young group leaders at the FLI keep him in very good memory.
The chemist Karl Bauer touched biological questions already with his diploma thesis on the biosynthesis of penicillins at the University of Stuttgart. As a PhD student Karl visited the Nobel laureate meeting in Lindau where he met Fritz Lipmann. Three and half years at the Lipmann Laboratory and a vistit to Roger Guillemin, another Nobel laureate, imprinted Karl Bauer's interests. He became an expert of biosynthesis, function, transport and degradation of peptide hormones in the brain, and an expert of thyroid gland regulation. Karl developed these themes as a research group leader at the Technical University Berlin from 1974 to 1987, followed by work in Hannover. In 1988, Karl was awarded by the president of the Max Planck Society a personal professorship and department at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Endocrinology in Hannover.
It was our good fortune that we could host Karl as an emeritus professor after his retirement in 2006. A very charming profile of Karl was printed in the FLIPPER, in 2009. On December 19, 2018, a sad message reached us: Karl Bauer passed away on that evening.
(Author: Peter Herrlich)
