From Australia’s Jewish Past: Sir Otto Frankel – world-renowned geneticist, plant breeder, cytologist and genetic conservationist
Otto Herzberg-Frankel was born in Vienna on 4 November 1900, the third of four sons of a prominent and wealthy lawyer and his wife Therese.
Sir Otto Frankel
The family name was relatively uncommon at that time in Vienna and it was Otto’s paternal grandfather who added Herzberg from his mother’s name. After his father’s death, Otto chose to drop the hyphen and revert to Frankel.
As a child, Otto was always impatient and wilful. From the age of nine, he attended a classical Staatsgymnasium – secondary college – for eight years, where he learned little mathematics and less science but studied Latin for eight years and Greek for four. Otto was small and short-sighted, and he was rejected as unfit to join the Austro-Hungarian military. To make matters even worse, he could not attend university as it was closed to him because he had not been a war hero.
Otto studied at universities in Vienna, Munich, and Giessen. In 1925, he obtained a doctorate in agriculture from the Agricultural University of Berlin to study plant genetic linkage. Between 1925 and 1927, he was a plant breeder at a private estate near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia before travelling to Palestine briefly to help create plant and animal breeding programs. His next stop was Cambridge, England, where he worked for a time at the University’s Plant Breeding Institute.
He was a highly effective builder and leader of scientific research groups – he was a geneticist by training, plant breeder by occupation, cytologist by inclination and genetic conservationist by acclaim. His career in science was unusual in that his most widely acclaimed work was done after his official retirement, and was always a man of an inexhaustible variety of opinions.
In 1925, he married in Berlin, emigrating to Christchurch in 1929 to take up an appointment as a plant geneticist at the Wheat Research Institute of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. He concentrated mainly on improving grain baking and milling quality and yield. While he was able to improve baking quality, he was unsuccessful in increasing yield, leading him to see a need for basic research to define the major components of yield. He failed to convince his superiors to increase fundamental research at the DSIR, but in 1942, he became Director of the Wheat Research Institute. This role enabled him to foster such work to a limited extent. After the Waite Research Institute’s wheat breeding section combined with the Department of Science and Industrial Research’s agronomy division in 1949, Otto became Associate Director of the merged division, and the following year became Director. In 1951 the University of New Zealand awarded him a doctorate of science.
Otto remained in New Zealand for the next twenty-two years before moving to Canberra in 1951 with his second wife, having divorced his first in 1936. There were no children from the two marriages. His next appointment was as Chief of the Division of Plant Industry at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). The lack of progress in promoting the need for basic plant science in New Zealand may have influenced him to make the move. The then Chairman of the CSIRO, (Sir) Ian Clunies Ross, supported Otto in appointing top plant scientists from around the world. Together, the two built up fundamental research in the Division. The strengthening of high-quality research led to increased recognition of the Division internationally and stimulated its attraction to visiting research fellows from overseas.
Otto became a powerful spokesperson for research, having the ear of the Menzies Government, which enabled him to convince them to fund the construction of a phytotron. This facilitated research using controlled climate growth conditions and enabled ongoing research on problems and applications in agriculture, which at the time were of importance to Australia. CSIRO scientists worked with their university counterparts, training young researchers in the latest work on plant responses to environmental conditions, as well as strengthening the reputation of Australian plant scientists in a number of fields. Otto established strong teams in genetics, physiology, and biochemistry within the plant industry.
By 1962, Otto was a CSIRO executive member. This gave him the opportunity to advocate for basic research as well as continuing his research on the floral development of wheat, as well as publishing on the evolution and importance of speltoid wheats. Unfortunately, this work did not lead to a major breakthrough in the fertility of the wheat inflorescence. However, together with his promotion, colleagues, and research on the importance of conserving the genetic resources of the wild relatives of crop and pasture plants, it did place him in a position of global influence.
Whilst Otto retired in 1966, he continued to work as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), as well as becoming a CSIRO Honorary Research Fellow. He played an important role in the activities of the International Biological Program of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). At the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Otto gave an address that initiated broad public knowledge on the issue of genetic conservation. His recommendations on the care and use of genetic resources were adopted by the conference, and he became one of the most important scientists in the field.
By 1974 he was active in establishing the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources in the CGIAR. He remained an activist, particularly in partnership with CSIRO scientists, arguing for the value and management of genetic resources. As a mark of recognition, the IBPGR set up the Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship Program supporting scientists entering the field. (Nikolai Vavilov was a world-renowned Russian geneticist and botanist whom Otto had met in 1935).
Otto was an outstanding figure in the Australian science community. He was a Fellow of the Royal Societies of New Zealand, London, the Australian Academy of Science, and a foreign associate of the United States of America’s National Academy of Sciences. In 1966 he received a knighthood. He had played a central role in establishing the Australian Academy of Science, including the architecture of its building. An article in the Melbourne Age in 1988 described Otto as ‘a complex but practical man’ who ‘delighted in music, art and argument’. He ‘could be rough or kindly, bored or engaged, impossible or altogether charming by turns’. Trout fishing, gardening, and skiing were among his hobbies – skiing until the age of ninety in the Snowy Mountains. Otto died on 21 November 1998 in Canberra. He was mourned internationally and will always be known as a founding figure in genetic resource science.
Whilst Otto in his earlier years, had little time to pursue other activities, between 1937 and 1939, he tried to assist the immigration to New Zealand of Jewish refugees from Europe. He was secretary of a committee working with Sir Karl Popper, an Austrian-British science, social and political philosopher. Karl favoured intellectuals, whereas Otto had to deal with the Minister for Immigration who thought there were already too many of them in the country.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:-
Australian Dictionary of Biography – W. J. Peacock and Elizabeth S. Dennis; Australian Academy of Science; Encyclopedia of Australian Science; Australian National University
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