“In 1945, therefore, I proved a sentimental fool; and Mr. Truman could safely have classified me among the whimpering idiots he did not wish admitted to the presidential office. For I felt that no man has the right to decree so much suffering, and that science, in providing and sharpening the knife and in upholding the ram, had incurred a guilt of which it will never get rid. It was at that time that the nexus between science and murder became clear to me. For several years after the somber event, between 1947 and 1952, I tried desperately to find a position in what then appeared to me as a bucolic Switzerland,—but I had no success.”

Erwin Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life before Nature (1978), 4.

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Erwin Chargaff6

Ukrinian-born biochemist who emigrated to the United States 1905–2002

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Erwin Chargaff6

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