Tag Archives: east germany

I first met my friend Gunter at a scientific meeting on the Greek Island of Crete in 1986. He was from East Germany. I knew his published work at the time, and when I shared my unpublished data, he agreed to send me some Drosophila stocks that would advance my research.At the meeting, he and the other scientists from behind the “iron curtain” had no western currency, so as to discourage defections. Collections were taken up for them among the western...

My friend Gunter grew up in the German Democratic Republic (“East Germany”). He eventually established himself as a professor at the Genetics Institute at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenburg, He first came to my attention through a series of papers he published in the early 1980s that I read as a postdoc. Then, in the summer of 1986, I got to attend a meeting on the Molecular and Developmental Biology of Drosophila, sponsored by the European...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. We show that this East-West difference is due to girls’ attitudes, confidence and competitiveness in math, and not to other confounding factors, such as the difference in economic conditions or teaching styles across the former political border. (via Lisa Cook)  Jobs: Richard Thaler writes about the evolution of behavioral economics in AER. (Gated, but you can watch him explain it in his Nobel lecture version and slides). ...