Otto Rössler
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Otto Eberhard Rössler (born 20 May 1940) is a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of ...
known for his work on
chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have co ...
and the theoretical equation known as the
Rössler attractor The Rössler attractor is the attractor for the Rössler system, a system of three non-linear ordinary differential equations originally studied by Otto Rössler in the 1970s... These differential equations define a continuous-time dynamical ...
. He is best known to the general public for his involvement in a failed lawsuit to halt the
Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...
due to fears that it would generate mini black holes.


Biography

Rössler was born in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, into an academic family: his father, also named Otto Rössler, was an Austrian Nazi and a scholar of
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...
who was affiliated with the
Ahnenerbe The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promot ...
and later held a professorship at the
University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...
. Rössler was awarded his MD in 1966. After postdoctoral studies at the
Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology The former Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology was located in Bulldern, Westphalia, Germany, moved to Seewiesen in 1957. It was one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft). Background A working group was f ...
in
Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
, and a visiting appointment at the Center for Theoretical Biology at SUNY-Buffalo, in 1969 he became Professor for Theoretical Biochemistry at the
University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Wü ...
. In 1994, he became Professor of Chemistry by decree.Collaborator profile
ATOMOSYD research group, accessed 2012-04-21.
. Rössler has held visiting positions at the
University of Guelph , mottoeng = "to learn the reasons of realities" , established = May 8, 1964 ()As constituents: OAC: (1874) Macdonald Institute: (1903) OVC: (1922) , type = Public university , chancellor ...
(Mathematics) in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, th
Center for Nonlinear Studies
of the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
at Los Alamos, the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
(Chemical Engineering), the
Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fi ...
(Theoretical Physics), and the
Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, includ ...
(Complexity Research) in
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
.


Research

Rössler has authored hundreds of scientific papers in fields as wide-ranging as
biogenesis Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized that certain forms, such as fleas, could arise fr ...
, the
origin of language The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study th ...
, differentiable automata, chaotic attractors, endophysics, micro relativity, artificial universes, the hypertext encyclopedia, and world-changing technology. His most heavily cited publication is the 1976 paper in which he studied what is now known as the
Rössler attractor The Rössler attractor is the attractor for the Rössler system, a system of three non-linear ordinary differential equations originally studied by Otto Rössler in the 1970s... These differential equations define a continuous-time dynamical ...
, a system of three linked differential equations that exhibit
chaotic dynamics Chaotic was originally a Danish trading card game. It expanded to an online game in America which then became a television program based on the game. The program was able to be seen on 4Kids TV (Fox affiliates, nationwide), Jetix, The CW4Kids, ...
. Rössler discovered his system after a series of exchanges with
Arthur Winfree Arthur Taylor Winfree (May 15, 1942 – November 5, 2002) was a theoretical biologist at the University of Arizona. He was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. Winfree was noted for his work on the mathematical modeling of biologica ...
as detailed by . In 2015, Rössler published in '' Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology'' "a journal article that points not only to a potential cure for autism, but also a means of creating mystical, all-wise elephants".


Advocacy

Rössler and his wife Reimara have been involved with a long-running series of disputes with their employer, the University of Tübingen, which they accuse of discrimination and of violations of academic freedom. In 1988, Reimara Rössler, a professor of medicine, was transferred to a different department within the university; in protest, she began working from home. The state of
Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
sued her for failure to perform her assigned duties, as a result of which by 1996 she lost her job and was forced to give up a second home to refund her back pay. Meanwhile, in 1993 and 1994, Otto Rössler had been assigned to teach an introductory chemistry course according to the prescribed curriculum for medical students, but insisted instead on teaching his own material. After he was replaced in the course by another lecturer, he continued trying to give the lectures himself, and was removed by police several times. Because of these incidents, in 1995 a state official tried to force Rössler to undergo psychological tests, but after international protests by many academics this plan was dropped. Rössler continued protesting against his and his wife's treatment by the university and in August 2001 he was caught defacing the university auditorium with spray paint in an attempt to draw attention to his protests. In June 2008, Rössler publicly criticized the
Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...
experiment supervised by
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
in
Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
and was involved in a failed lawsuit to halt it. He argued that the experiment could plausibly generate dangerous miniature black holes that could bring about the end of the world. Hermann Nicolai, director of the
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, ...
' quantum gravity division, later described Rössler's arguments as being "... based on an elementary misunderstanding of the theory of general relativity". Rössler has also been an honorary editor of the journal ''
Chaos, Solitons & Fractals Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
'', which came under fire in 2009 for allegedly publishing papers without as strict
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
as would be expected for a scientific journal. In a subsequent libel suit brought by former journal editor Mohammed El Naschie in response to this criticism, Rössler testified on behalf of El Naschie, stating in court about peer review that "if you have something new to offer, peer review is dangerous", adding that in such cases "peer review delays progress in science"..


Books

Rössler is the author or co-author of: * ''Encounter with Chaos: Self-Organized Hierarchical Complexity in Semiconductor Experiments'' (with J. Peinke, J. Parisi, and R. Stoop 1992, Springer-Verlag, 1992, ) * ''Das Flammenschwert oder wie hermetisch ist die Schnittstelle des Mikrokonstruktivismus?'' (in German, Benteli, 1996, ) * ''Interventionen. Vertikale und horizontale Grenzüberschreitung'' (in German, with René Stettler, Stroemfeld, 1997, ) * ''Aussenwelt – Innenwelt – Überwelt. Ein Gespräch'' (in German, with René Stettler and Peter Weibel, Stroemfeld, 1997, ) * ''Endophysics: The World As An Interface'' (World Scientific, 1998, ) * ''Das Denken eines Kindes: Entwicklung, Persönlichkeit, Gefühle'' (in German, with R. Rössler, Rowohlt, 1998, ) * ''Medium des Wissens. Das Menschenrecht auf Information'' (in German, with Artur P. Schmidt, P. Haupt, 2000, ) * ''Descartes' Traum : von der unendlichen Macht des Außenstehens'' (Audiobook, in German, Supposé, 2002, ) * ''Chaos: The world of nonperiodic oscillations'' (Springer, 2020,
Chaos


References


External links



Institut für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie, Universität Tübingen.
Otto Rössler
From the origin of life to the architecture of chaos. (20 October 2004). ''Analyse Topologique et Modélisation de Systèmes Dynamiques.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Rossler, Otto 1940 births Living people Chaos theorists German biochemists Academic staff of the University of Tübingen Academic controversies Scientists from Berlin