Bauer, Erwin

Born Oct. 19, 1890, in Löcze (modern Levoča), Austria-Hungary; died 1942. Theoretical biologist.

Bauer graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Budapest (1914). He emigrated from Hungary in 1919 after the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. He worked in Germany and Czechoslovakia and beginning in 1935, in the USSR (Obukh Institute of Occupational Diseases, Timiriazev Biological Institute, the Second Moscow Medical Institute, and the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine). In his principal work, Theoretical Biology (1935), he developed the principle of a stable disequilibrium in living systems. On the basis of this principle he constructed a complete concept of life and its manifestations (metabolism, growth and development, irritability, reproduction, genetic mutation, and evolution). In many respects, Bauer’s work anticipated the development of modern biology.