Scientific Books
& Poetry
The sodium pump, also called Na,K-ATPase (NKA) is a biomotor inserted in the membrane of all living cells; it extrudes sodium ions from the cell interior and replaces them with potassium ions. This is a fundamental and vital process. Furthermore, the sodium pump is also a receptor for pharmacological and toxicological compounds, such as the heart drug digitoxin and the arrow poison ouabain. Around 1974 it became possible to extract the sodium pump from the cell membrane and insert it into artificial phospholipid vesicles where it worked in the same way as in the cell. Now, the pump could be studied in its pure form on a molecular level. The author has been involved in this pioneering research and tells some fascinating stories concerning the first ultrastructural description of the reconstituted sodium pump in collaboration with specialists at Arhus University in Denmark and at Duke University in the US, and about the use of the reconstituted sodium pump for testing an unknown inhibitory compound in collaboration with Harvard Medical School.
An astonishing scientific story is presented in this booklet: how do cells maintain their volume and how do they fire signals in nerve fibers? Indeed, these two processes are performed by a single biological system, one of the most complex and sophisticated ones in nature: the sodium pump or sodium-potassium-activated adenosine triphosphatase (Na,K-ATPase), which is embedded in the membrane of each living cell. It is a combination of a motor and a battery underlying the organization of life itself. The current account is historical and shows how the author was involved herself in this fundamental research and found a transport system for phosphate ions linked to the activity of the sodium pump. This historical account is interesting for all scientists working on membrane processes who wish to understand better how our current knowledge of the Na,K-ATPase has been built up slowly but surely, patiently adding piece after piece to a complicated puzzle.
During her doctoral and postdoctoral studies, Beatrice Maier Anner became familiar with a fascinating biological system, called sodium pump by the physiologists and Na,K-ATPase by the biochemists; it is a sort of biomotor located in the cell membrane, which constantly expulses sodium (Na) ions from the cell interior and replaces them by potassium (K) ions, at the expense of chemical energy provided by adenosine-triphosphate (ATP) which is cleaved to adenosine-diphosphate (ADP) by the Na,K-ATPase, which gets its pump energy from the cleavage of this chemical bond. There would be no life without this fundamental biological system. Interestingly, it is also a pharmacological receptor, i.e. compounds extracted from the Digitalis plant of from the toad bind to the pump and block it, hence the toxicity of e.g. digitoxin or the toad's bufotoxins. The author has acquired extensive practical and theoretical knowledge of this biological system, acquired at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA consisting in inserting purified functional Na,K-ATPase into artificial membranes (liposomes) in order to study the pump activity on a molecular level. The present book is a unique historical overview from the discovery and purification of the sodium pump to its reconstitution in artificial membranes in the 20th century. This short book permits to become rapidly familiar with this fascinating biomotor and to find unique historical sources.
Expressing a period of life in the form of poems: is that even possible? The author had no other choice: the poems came spontaneously and without being asked, sometimes becoming really annoying. In order to get rid of them, so to speak, to free herself from them, she finally brought the poems into printable form after more than two decades of waiting, because it became a task to communicate the poem, and thus to convey to the reader a heap of sensitive feelings, reflections, sensations, memories, and finely observed images of nature.
Family Books
Albert Einstein is one of the most known scientists. Therefore, it is surprising that one of his fatherly protectors, who had helped him to get enrolled at the prestigious polytechnical school (ETH) at Zurich, is poorly known: it is the authors great-grandfather Gustav Maier. He was born at Ulm, Germany, in 1844 and, together with his spouse Regina Friedlaender, they were good friends of Hermann and Pauline Einstein-Koch. Thus, it was natural that the Einsteins reached out to Gustav Maier, meanwhile installed at Zurich, for assisting the 16-year-old Albert in getting his education. Indeed, the Einsteins hat moved for professional reasons to Italy, and it would have been very difficult for Albert to get a higher education there. At the arrival of Albert at Zurich, in the fall of 1895, Gustav Maier had recognized immediately that the young man was exceptionally gifted. He reached out to one of his acquaintances, Albin Herzog, rector of the ETH, informing him about a prodigy and whether the young man could start his studies at the ETH despite his young age. In this book, these important steps in Albert Einstein's life are illustrated with source material. Furthermore, the biography of Gustav Maier is presented, mostly in his own words, and the Jewish family origin is explored. Indeed, it was in the Jewish congregation at Ulm where the Maiers and the Einsteins had met and started their friendship. This book contains source material from private family archives.
Hans Wolfgang Maier was born in Frankfurt in 1882 as the youngest of three sons of Gustav and Regina Maier-Friedlaender. In 1892, the family moved to Switzerland, mainly to escape the professional barriers erected for Jews in Germany, who were not allowed to work in public service. There, Gustav Maier declared Judaism a family secret and joined the liberal reformed Zwingli church with his family; he retired from banking and became a writer, ethicist, and pacifist. In fall 1895, the 16-year-old Albert Einstein was a guest at the Maier home in Zurich and Gustav assisted the gifted young man to be accepted at the Federal Polytechnical School, ETH to study physics (see the book Gustav Maier. Sponsor of the young Albert Einstein, published by the same author). Hence, since 1895 Hans was acquainted with Albert Einstein; 38 years later, Albert's son Eduard, a brilliant medical student, started having mental problems and became the patient of Hans, who had become director of the Psychiatric University Clinic at Zurich, the "Burghölzli". This book illustrates the life of the psychiatrist Hans Wolfgang Maier and his family with documents and images from a private Maier family archive.
This book brings to light the life of an unusual family, in which the well-known Swiss paediatrician Dr. med. Marie Meierhofer, the author's aunt has grown up. She is also related to the Maier family, about whom two biographies by the same author have already been published by GRIN Verlag: "Gustav Maier - Sponsor of the Young Albert Einstein" and "Hans Wolfgang Maier - Eduard Einstein's Doctor". In fact, Marie Meierhofer had studied with Prof. Dr. med. Hans Wolfgang Maier and received her doctorate in psychiatry in Zurich; as a result, her younger sister Emmi had met and married a son of Hans Wolfgang Maier. The book shows a brief cross-section of the 20th century with its industrial pioneers such as Albert Meierhofer and artists such as the painter Marie Meierhofer-Lang, surrounded by pioneers in ballooning and flying, around Zurich and Aarau.
There are families in which a certain profession is passed down from generation to generation. This was also the case in two Swiss families linked by marriage: Gustav Maier and Moisey Esther. Over three generations (1914 to 2020), both families have produced an unusually large number of members who worked in the medical field.
Beatrice Maier Anner, herself a part of this extraordinary family, uses this accumulation of doctors as a hook to record the history of these two strands of her family in a book. The author enriches her family biography with a variety of sources. On the basis of the many (historical) photographs, letters and other documents, a multi-layered and, above all, approachable picture of the two families emerges.
The lives of the various family members are considered chronologically and roughly outlined, with a special focus on the most important professional stations in five psychiatric hospitals in Switzerland: Burghölzli, Rosegg, Waldau, Königsfelden and Littenheid. "Three generations of doctors and two world wars" – as the title of the book suggests, Beatrice Maier Anner's book aims to appeal not only to readers who are interested in Swiss history in general, but also to those who want to learn more about the effects of the First and Second World Wars on (Jewish) professional and family life.
For decades, the author has been managing a large family archive, which she has painstakingly preserved, organized and digitized in recent years. After she had compiled five books about her ancestors, some of whom were well-known, in which she classified their most important stages of life historically and chronologically and showed them in carefully documented pictures, her descendants and relatives also wanted a book about herself.
In this last booklet about her family history, Beatrice Maier Anner presents her own life. Detailed commentaries on all the photos can be found at various points in her five books that have already been published – but the present volume deliberately limits itself to letting the pictures speak for themselves and thus serves as a resting point and conclusion to the exciting family series about the Maiers, Meierhofers and Anners.
Almost every family has secrets that requires a meticulous search of old photo albums and documents, and archival work, to explore. Especially when a family member disappears, it often keeps the relatives busy for several generations. This was also the case in the family of Beatrice Maier Anner, whose grandmother Leonie Laissle disappeared in Zurich in the spring of 1915.
The fate of her grandmother, who left behind her husband and four children when she disappeared, has occupied her since childhood. Also because there is hardly any trace of the grandmother – no writings, no pictures. In her search for clues, the author learns not only more about Leonie Laissle, but also about the lives of her two sisters, Hedwig and Liesel/Alice Leissle.
In this book, Maier Anner takes her readers on an exciting and twisty search for her missing grandmother, but also for the history of her family. On the basis of various sources such as photographs, official documents and speeches, which the author has painstakingly brought together, an overall picture of the different fates of the family members finally emerges. Maier Anner's book is aimed at all those who are interested in history and want to accompany her on this detective journey into family history.
How does it feel to be the completely unknown sister of an internationally famous and acclaimed child psychiatrist? That was the fate of my mother, Emmi Maier, née Meierhofer, as the younger sister of Dr med, Dr phil hc, Marie Meierhofer, the Zurich paediatrician who died in 1998, with an institute of the same name in Zurich and two streets named Marie-Meierhofer, one in Zurich, and one in Turgi, canton of Aargau. No, there is no Emmi-streer in Switzerland, but that is precisely why it was important to me to bring her out of her shadowy existence and to shed light on the stages of her unusual life: at the age of 20 she was an orphan, her parents had been killed in accidents, her mother in 1925, her father in 1931. Until then, she had been the proud daughter of a factory director, until after his death it was suddenly realized that he had lost his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash. The shares of his factory, the Bronzewarenfabrik AG Turgi, also known as BAG, a lighting fixture factory of European proportions, still existed, but no longer had any value. His three daughters, Marie, called Maiti, Emmi and Albertine, called Tineli, were left with nothing. Maiti had already successfully passed the first exams of her medical studies in Zurich, so she was allowed to continue her studies. The younger sisters, on the other hand, were instructed to earn money as quickly as possible. So it came about that Emmi first took care of the household in order to provide a home for the orphaned sisters. Emmi, however, did not get much glamour from it; it was only when she married a doctor and gave birth to 3 girls that her social status improved a little, but was far below the fame earned by her sister herself. In this book, the stages of Emmi's life are mentioned and illustrated with material from her family archive.
