GoKawiilOne hundred years ago, on 23 September 1926, zoologist Paul Kammerer shot himself on Hochschneeberg, a mountain plateau southwest of Vienna. He was discovered slumped against a rock by a retired railway worker who had followed the barking of the dogs Kammerer had taken with him on his final walk.
Shock at the zoologist’s death made headlines, and the reasons for his suicide are still debated. Kammerer was an internationally famous scientist, described as a “successor to Darwin” in The New York Times. His charisma, unconventional career and turbulent personal life were well known.
Kammerer’s death occurred just a few weeks after he was accused of academic fraud — evidence of tampering with his most famous experiment was found by the US herpetologist Gladwyn Noble and set out in a news article in Nature1. Kammerer’s suicide has been seen by some as an indication of his guilt, leading many scientists to dismiss his life’s work.
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Kammerer’s reputation among his colleagues was also tainted by his success at popularizing his own research in books, articles and public lectures. Although such outreach would get a better reception today, in 1919, a committee of the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Vienna that was considering his (unsuccessful) application for promotion to associate professor described him as “journalistic”, “unscientific” and a self-publicist2. His reputation wasn’t helped by his publication of unconventional ideas: his 1919 book The Law of Seriality posited that a universal principle underlies everyday coincidences.
Nonetheless, this complicated man was also a skilled zoologist, capable of raising sensitive animals such as amphibians and posing questions that still resonate today. He was also a passionate pacifist and internationalist in a time of growing nationalism. As I describe in this article, discoveries in the century since his death might even go some way towards rescuing his scientific reputation.
A colourful life
Kammerer was born in Vienna in 1880, the only child from the marriage of his father Karl, a well-to-do owner of an optical instruments factory, and his mother Sofie, a passionate pianist. Both had been married before. With a foot in both science and the arts, his studies at the University of Vienna spanned biology and musicology (including composition and piano). His doctoral work was started at the university and completed at the private Institute for Experimental Biology (known as the Vivarium) in Vienna, where he would spend most of his career.
Kammerer’s warm character, good looks and honest demeanour were mentioned repeatedly by those who met him. As the writer Arthur Koestler noted in his 1971 account of Kammerer’s life, The Case of the Midwife Toad, acquaintances described him as a “frank open-hearted man” with “great charm and integrity”, and as “quite sincere, genuine and ... earnest”. His vanity and his attractiveness to women, however, led to a complicated and sometimes troubled personal life.
While still a student, he vied with composer Alban Berg for the affections of the soprano Helene Nahowska (rumoured to be the illegitimate daughter of Kaiser Franz Joseph I). In 1907, he jumped up in the social hierarchy when he married Baroness Felicitas Maria Theodora von Wiedersperg, known as Dora.
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