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Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706-1544
1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:suttie{at}biochem.wisc.edu.
Carl Baumann occupies a unique place in the history of the American Institute of Nutrition (AIN) because as a graduate student he made the first oral presentation of research at the first annual scientific meeting of the society, which was held in New York in 1934. Thus, he initiated the tradition of graduate students presenting their research at the annual meeting. He was elected to membership in the AIN in 1938 and was made a fellow of the society in 1980. In addition, he served on the ad hoc history committee, which had some responsibility for preparing the 50-year history of the society, and on the editorial board of The Journal of Nutrition.
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Carl was born to Edward Carl and Minna Einwaldt Baumann in Milwaukee, WI on August 10, 1906; he grew up and attended public schools in that city, where his mother was a teacher. He began his college education at the University of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Campus, but soon transferred to Madison, where he received a B.S. in chemistry in 1929. The excitement in chemistry at that time, perhaps not unlike today, was at its interface with biology and Carl entered Wisconsin’s graduate program in biochemistry. This was one of the foremost biochemistry programs in the nation, known especially for its work on vitamins, and it had been the site of the identification of the first vitamin, fat-soluble A, 16 years earlier. Vitamin A was still of interest to the Wisconsin biochemists and Carl explored its relationship to carotene under the guidance of Harry Steenbock, receiving his doctorate in 1933 (1). It was this research on the absorption and storage of vitamin A in the rat that he presented at the first annual AIN scientific meeting.
In the midst of the Great Depression, Carl was fortunate in obtaining a General Education Board Fellowship to study in Europe for 2 years. He went first to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut in Heidelberg to work with Richard Kuhn, who had recently taken the position of Principal of the Institute of Chemistry there and who a few years later received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on carotenoids and vitamins. Carl then spent some time with David Keilin, a Russian born biochemist who was at Cambridge University and who discovered the critical role that cytochromes and certain oxidative enzymes play in metabolism. He also visited for a while in Copenhagen at the Carlsberg Biological Sciences Institute in the laboratory of Albert Fischer.
Research and teaching career
In the fall of 1936, Carl returned to the University of Wisconsin to take the position of research fellow and instructor in the biochemistry department. Three years later he was given an assistant professorship and promoted to associate professor in 1941. Returning to Madison after an unusual tour of duty during the war, he was made a full professor in 1946. After 38 years as a faculty member in that department, he received emeritus status in 1974.
Over 50 graduate students obtained their degree with him, most of them biochemistry students, but some with joint-major degrees in animal science, nutrition (home economics) or poultry science. He often remarked that his students went on to make a greater contribution to society than did his research results. Many of his joint-major students in nutrition (home economics) have had important careers in nutrition education. On one occasion Baumann wrote: "Retirement becomes not only bearable, but actually a pleasure when I see so many of you in print, holding important jobs, active on editorial boards, candidates for offices in scientific societies, and especially as winners of big-time awards. The older generation can’t, of course, take credit for your brains, and shouldn’t claim too much re[garding] training, which, in the last analysis, top students do mostly on their own. But we can, I think, brag that your years at Wisconsin didn’t spoil you." Three of his students, Hellen Linkswiler, Howard Ganther, and Robert Swick, became faculty members in Wisconsin’s Nutritional Sciences department and two, Jim and Betty Miller, were faculty members in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research there.
For 38 years Carl taught a laboratory course on vitamins. Many of the biochemistry students at Madison had their first, and some only, view of nutritional deficiencies in that laboratory, which employed primarily rats and chicks. He also was responsible for the seminar course for seniors in biochemistry and participated regularly in the nutrition and metabolism graduate seminar.
Carl’s research interests were broad and through the years he and his students explored several different lines of investigation. As a faculty member he continued some of his early work on vitamin A (2) and also took an interest in oxidative processes, which led him into studies of the influence of diet on carcinogenicity and tumor metabolism. He was the first to recognize that caloric excess was more important than dietary fat in stimulating tumor growth (3). He was also the first to recognize that, rather than being carcinogenic, relatively high amounts of selenium were protective against certain cancers (3). This led to a long-term interest in the metabolism of selenium under a variety of conditions (4). Other areas of interest included amino acid utilization (5) and B-vitamin function (6), particularly one form of folic acid (7).
By the 1950s, Baumann’s group had begun a series of studies on sterol metabolism, first in skin (8) and then later in the intestine by intestinal micro-organisms. During his years at Wisconsin, Baumann had over 200 research publications to his credit.
Adventures during World War II
One day late in the fall of 1944, while Carl was lecturing in a biochemistry class, the departmental secretary appeared at the classroom door and said a man from the War Department, who would not be put off, wanted him on the telephone. The first question that man asked him was whether he could read, speak, and understand German. Of course he had grown up in a community in which German was spoken a lot and he had spent some time in Germany as a postdoc, but having visions of his being dropped behind the lines in some clandestine operation, Carl answered that, while he could do all three, he would never be mistaken for a native. The official replied that was okay and a few days later Carl found himself at the local air force base being outfitted for an officer’s uniform. He was to be part of a top-secret operation with responsibility for operating just behind the front lines, detaining German scientists, interrogating them about their research programs, and locating any uranium that might be used for nuclear weapons (9). The United States Government was well aware that German scientists had been among the pioneers in nuclear fission and intelligence reports of massive underground projects raised the concern that the Germans were at least as advanced as the Americans in producing an atom bomb. Moreover, the American atom bomb project needed more uranium and the U.S. military wanted to find German uranium piles before they could be diverted elsewhere (10). Military officials had reservations about a mission that included "long-hairs" who would have to be looked after like children, but their reservations were laid to rest early in the mission when the commanding officer went back to Washington, DC and reported: "Those guys are longhairs with crew-cuts. They can work, scheme, bitch, finagle and ride a jumping jeep right along with the best of our field soldiers.... They’re running our operational men off their feet ... and they can play, too, believe me" (10).
The intelligence mission, going by the code name of "Alsos" and carrying out many of its missions between the Allied and the Axis lines, had several close calls and hair-raising adventures (9,10). Baumann was part of the group that first went into Heidelberg along with the Allies and later as took Heisenberg’s laboratory and Diebner’s atomic pile in Southwest Germany, including the associated uranium and heavy water that were shipped back to the States (10).
Baumann was individually noted for his role in several incidents. The first was when the Alsos scientists were interrogating Richard Kuhn at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut immediately after their arrival in Heidelberg. Carl and another chemist vouched for Kuhn, based on their friendship with him, and he was not taken into custody or interrogated extensively at that time (9). Much later, when Baumann was in Berlin, however, he found a stash of many of the secret chemistry research documents that Kuhn knew about and should have provided earlier. Later, at a second interrogation and using the documents from Berlin, Alsos was able to pry the complete set of these documents from Kuhn (9). Baumann went into Munich as the American troops were clearing out the nest of German diehards who had retreated to that area. In Munich he was able to locate and detain two top physicists, Walther Gerlach, who had headed the nuclear research program, and Kurt Diebner, who had headed the German Army’s uranium project. He also found the uranium that had been moved from the secret laboratory in Thuringia, as well as some important documents (9,10).
Baumann was the only scientist to accompany the head of Alsos on a high-speed drive across Germany in a jeep to take custody of Marie Curie’s radium standard before the Russians got it. On the way their jeep was knocked off the road by an on-coming truck, but luckily they survived, reached Weida, which had been taken by Patton’s Army, just before it was turned over to the Russians and located the French standard as well as those used by the Germans (10).
When they were allowed into Berlin early in July 1945, not only did Baumann discover the secret chemistry documents, but he was assigned the job of writing a report on the materials found in Himmler’s "scientific academy" (9). These had very little to do with science, however, and much more to do with the history and culture of the Teutonic peoples and Germanic Folklore, subjects of special interest to Hitler. Toward the end of his life, Carl reminisced about two personal experiences while he was in Berlin. Once, when he and an intelligence officer were out walking around, they came across Russian soldiers carrying materials out of an underground area. Curious, they went down into the bunker and wandered through two rooms. Coming out via the steeply spiraled metal staircase being used by the soldiers, Carl noticed a spoon that had been dropped and was lodged in the staircase. He picked it out and pocketed it. On it was inscribed "Haushalt von Fuhrer"! In another incident, he was almost caught when acting as a go-between for an American G.I. who, against regulations, wanted to sell his Mickey Mouse watch to a Russian soldier. As Carl handed the watch to the soldier, a Russian officer approached. The soldier quickly pocketed the watch, thrust some money into Carl’s hand, and fled. When Carl later counted the money it was exactly the amount the G.I. was expecting.
For his wartime performance, the United States Government awarded Carl the Medal of Freedom (then given only for civilian services during wartime) and the Certificate of Merit. The British Government awarded him the Order of the British Empire.
International activities and memberships
In part because of his facility with the German language, in 1959 Carl was asked to participate in a nutrition survey being conducted in Chile by the U.S.’s International Committee for Nutrition for National Defense. He served as the Deputy Director for the survey and as its head biochemist. Later he also participated in projects in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. From 1966 through 1969 he was Chief of Party for a Ford Foundation sponsored MUCIA project in the basic sciences at the Universidad Agraria La Molina in Lima, Peru. He concluded his international nutrition activities in 1974–75 as an AID-MUCIA Visiting Professor at the Institute Pertanian in Bangor, Indonesia.
In addition to his membership in the American Institute of Nutrition, Baumann was a member of Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa, the American Chemical Society, and the American Society of Biological Chemists.
Personal characteristics
Carl was a very private and somewhat shy person who was usually mild mannered. He was exceptionally neat in his person and in his office. One student remembers that his usual mild manner was sorely tested, however, when he passed by her not-so-neat laboratory bench and said: "Clean up this mess!" Carl was methodical as illustrated by his telling a student that he felt rather foolish putting a snow shovel in his car on a steamy July day, but he was leaving on a six-month international assignment and thought he might need it when he returned. Another student tells of Carl’s generosity when the student and his family were leaving to take their first postdoctoral position at the NIH. Knowing that the family’s finances would undoubtedly be tight because the reimbursement for the trip would come later, Carl slipped his student a $50 bill saying: "Well, you’ll need some money now to get out of town!" Later when the student tried to repay what he thought had been a loan, Carl wouldn’t take it but told him instead that he should keep it to give to another student who might need money to "get out of town" sometime in the future. In another case, one of Baumann’s students met a woman who had been denied admittance to biochemistry, her first choice, and was then in another graduate program. Baumann’s student thought the woman’s abilities made her worthy of being in the program she preferred. He asked Baumann to "go to bat" for her, which he did, and she later became a very successful academic scientist. Another student remembers that Baumann’s research mentoring style, appreciated by his students, was to give students a lot of freedom to follow their own sense of direction. When there were interesting results to report, Carl’s face would light up noticeably, but then he’d ask that the results be repeated. When the laboratory wasn’t productive for a few weeks, however, all students had to write periodic progress reports, which seemed to get things back on track.
Carl never married, but students enjoyed visiting Baumann in his bachelor’s home, which had been designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, located in the Shorewood Hills section of Madison. In the living room he had a grand piano that he played often for his own enjoyment.
Retirement years
After the international assignment in Indonesia, which occupied the early years of his retirement, Carl moved back to his hometown of Milwaukee where he could be near his sister and her family. There he took an apartment, where he continued to enjoy playing his piano and reported progress in playing his way through Mozart and other great piano literature. Eventually, he moved into a retirement center in Milwaukee, where he was living at the time of his death. In the spacious room that he occupied during his last few years there, Carl had a large desk and on the desk a 1930s photograph of the University of Wisconsin’s biochemistry faculty.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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LITERATURE CITED |
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 TOP LITERATURE CITED |
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1. Baumann, C. A., Riising, B. H. & Steenbock, H. (1934) Fat soluble vitamins:XLII. The absorption and storage of vitamin A in the rat. J. Biol. Chem. 107:705-715.
2. Baumann, C. A. (1953) Fat soluble vitamins. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 22:527-544.[Medline]
3. Clayton, C. C. & Baumann, C. A. (1949) Diet and azo dye tumors: Effect of diet during a period when the dye is not fed. Can. Res. 9:575-582.
4. Ganther, H. E., Levander, O. A. & Baumann, C. A. (1966) Dietary control of selenium volatilization in the rat. J. Nutr. 88:55-60.
5. Reynolds, M. S., Steel, D. L., Jones, E. M. & Baumann, C. A. (1958) Nitrogen balance of women maintained on various levels of methionine and cystine. J. Nutr. 64:99-111.
6. Miller, E. C., Baumann, C. A. & Rusch, H. P. (1945) Certain effects of dietary pyridoxine and casein on the carcinogenecity of p-dimethylaminoazobenzene. Can. Res. 5:713-716.
7. Sauberlich, H. E. & Baumann, C. A. (1948) A factor required for the growth of Leuconostoc Citrovorum. J. Biol. Chem. 176:165-173.
8. Idler, D. R. & Baumann, C. A. (1952) Skin sterols. II. Isolation of 
7-cholestenol. J. Biol. Chem. 195:623-628.
9. Goudsmit, S. A. (1947) Alsos 1947 Henry Schuman, Inc. New York, NY.
10. Pash, B. T. (1969) The Alsos Mission 1969 Award House New York, NY.
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