Author: Klaus Taschwer

With a background in the sociology of science, political science and philosophy, Klaus Taschwer lives in Vienna and is the science editor of the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. He is the founding editor of the science magazine heureka!, the co-author of Konrad Lorenz. A Biography and recipient of the 2016 Austrian State Award for Scientific Journalism.

Reviews:

"The Case of Paul Kammerer is a highly readable story and well-researched historical account of a remarkable biologist. Largely forgotten, Paul Kammerer was a talented, idealistic, childish and exasperating Viennese biologist, whose suicide following accusations he'd falsified the results of his groundbreaking research made headlines worldwide. Vienna in the first quarter of the twentieth century formed the backdrop to Kammerer's life, which began when the city was at its creative peak yet already showing signs of its rapid and atrocious decline into Nazism. Taschwer's important book reads like a detective story, uncovering new information concerning the allegation of fraud and providing a convincing explanation for the events that drove Kammerer to suicide. It is a careful, fascinating and chilling exposition of crimes against science and humanity and a plea for open-mindedness about past history and present agendas." — Eva Jablonka. Eva Jablonka is professor at The Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy and Ideas at Tel-Aviv University, and co-author of The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.

"Taschwer's biography is worth reading among others for its skilful and informative account of the history of biology since Lamarck:' — Peter Jungwirth, Wiener Zeitung extra.

"By placing the case of Kammerer in the context of Vienna's academic antisemitism and nationalism, Klaus Taschwer gives the story a new twist: it now symbolizes the once splendid, scientific Vienna's downfall, through its own fault, into pure mediocrity:' — Michael Hagner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.