Carl Johan Friedrich (Frits) Böttcher

Carl Johan Friedrich (Frits) Böttcher (Rotterdam, October 17, 1915 – The Hague, November 23, 2008) was a Dutch professor of physical chemistry and one of the founders of the Club of Rome.

Chess player and known chess composer of endgame studies

Life cycle
Study and doctorate
At the age of sixteen, Böttcher passed the HBS exam in his hometown with a ten in all science subjects. He then studied chemistry at Leiden University from 1932 to 1938. He was also active in chess, playing regularly for the Rotterdam chess club Wilhelm Steinitz (named after the Austrian chess player Wilhelm Steinitz). He also published more than 20 endgame studies between 1934 and 1942. He continued to play chess later in his life. For example, in 1988 he co-founded the Alexander Rueb Association for Chess Endgame Study (ARVES); a Dutch-Flemish association of chess enthusiasts interested in endgame studies.

In April 1940, Böttcher received his doctorate in mathematics and physics from Leiden University with the thesis The dielectric constant of liquids. A month later he began working in Amsterdam in the laboratory of the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (now Shell laboratory), but after the German invasion on May 10, he accepted his employer's offer to terminate the contract, under which he received four months' salary . During the war he delved further into his hobby, graphology. A few weeks after the liberation of the Netherlands he began giving lectures in physical chemistry. In May 1947, Böttcher, then 31 years old, became a professor of physical chemistry in Leiden.

Career

In addition, from 1949 he taught graphology to psychology students in Leiden. In 1953 he accepted the suggestion of a psychology professor friend to take on an associate professorship in graphology in Leiden in addition to his professorship in physical chemistry. The latter was converted to a part-time position in the same year, giving him time to become a part-time consultant to Shell, which he would remain for around 30 years. In the mid-1950s, Frits Böttcher was also chairman of the Dutch Association for the Promotion of Scientific Graphology. After about five years, he gave up his associate professorship in graphology due to increasing pressure from Dutch psychologists against the discipline. In both 1954 and 1960 he acted as a graphologist and expert witness in trials relating to two different murder cases involving Doctor O. He also conducted research on the Oera Linda book (OLB). Böttcher wrote about this in his report at the beginning of the 1970s: The comparison of the OLB manuscript with the combination of features from the Oera Linda book that was chosen for identification at the time leads to the compelling conclusion that JH Halbertsma wrote the OLB manuscript. There is no room for the slightest doubt.

Böttcher and a team researched arteriosclerosis and the deterioration of human arteries. Part of the research was the further application of gas chromatography, for which he received a large grant from the American Rockefeller Foundation. This led to the founding of the Gaubius Institute in Leiden in 1965, which initially belonged to the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and was initially headed by Böttcher. The institute became part of TNO in 1973.

In his role as chairman of the board of trustees of the Central Student Housing Foundation, which was involved in the construction of student housing and the purchase of student dormitories, he was in regular contact with the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences. In early 1963, after consultation with A. J. Piekaar, director general for science policy of that ministry from 1960, he expressed surprise that there was little preparation in the Netherlands for participation in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conference later that year Year. The Netherlands had been a member of the OECD since its founding in 1961, but the then Minister of Education, Arts and Science Cals believed that an economic organization should not deal with science policy. At Piekaar's request, Böttcher wrote a short note. After the elections of May 15, 1963, Cals was succeeded by Theo Bot, who found Böttcher's proposals useful and asked him to become chairman of the Dutch OECD delegation.

Frits Böttcher was involved in the founding of the Advisory Council for Science Policy (RAWB) and became its chairman when it was founded in 1966. At the invitation of the OECD, several heads of delegations met in Rome to discuss world population growth and its consequences. This consultation led to the founding of the so-called “Club of Rome” in 1968, of which Böttcher was one of the founders. The Club of Rome became known a few years later with the Meadows report Limits to Growth (1972), although Böttcher had distanced himself from this report as a dissident within the Club of Rome. [1] A preliminary version of this was leaked to the Dutch press via Wouter van Dieren and the initial reaction from the Dutch population was so positive that Böttcher suggested the establishment of national branches of the Club of Rome. As a result, the Netherlands became the first to have such a department in 1971, with Böttcher becoming its director. Ultimately, 900,000 copies of the report were to be sold in the Netherlands, which then had a population of 13 million. Frits Böttcher was a member of the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome from 1972 to 1978 and has been an honorary member since 1986.

He became a member of this council when the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) was founded in 1972. For this reason, he gave up the chairmanship of the RAWB in 1974, but remained a member. In 1976 his membership in both the WRR and the RAWB ended and in the same year he founded his own research institute: The Global Institute for the Study of Natural Resources. After working as a professor in Leiden for 33 years, he retired in 1980 and was then able to concentrate more on his research institute. An important point in his view was the cycles of natural resources and the interactions between them. He found the Gaia hypothesis of the British chemist James Lovelock inspiring and published a constructively critical review in the NRC Handelsblad on December 19, 1979. [2] In it he recognized the greenhouse effect, but as a factor through which the earth maintained cycles life on earth that supported him. He also criticized the exclusive focus on CO 2 as just one of the components of Gaia's natural cycles.

In the early 1990s, Frits Böttcher became known on radio, television and forums as a skeptic of the enhanced greenhouse effect. He said:

“The climate models are far too crude to predict anything with any degree of probability. But the CO 2 problem is a question of supply and demand. And there are calls for a CO 2 problem from politicians, environmental organizations and the nuclear energy lobby.”

Opponents pointed out that his institute was based on money from the car lobby such as Shell, BOVAG and RAI. Furthermore, they suspected that Böttcher's aversion to nuclear energy played an important role in his attitude to the greenhouse effect. After a discussion on television in which Böttcher had said that there was no CO 2 problem, Lucas Reijnders asked him: “You know that's not true”, to which he received the answer: “Yes, but I am against nuclear energy “. In February 2020, research by the Platform for Authentic Journalism in collaboration with Follow the Money and de Volkskrant in Böttcher's archive revealed that in the 1990s he received support from Shell, Texaco, Hoogovens, DSM, Gasunie, among others. KLM, Schiphol, ING, Bovag and the ANWB. [1] [3] On this occasion, climate scientists such as Pier Vellinga recalled that Böttcher did not engage in climate science, but relied on side publications and even on repeated empty slogans of American climate skeptics such as “Plants crave more CO2 in the The atmosphere ".

Foundation of ESEF
Frits Böttcher founded the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF) in 1994 together with Roger Bate and John Emsley, both from the United Kingdom. Later, the Global Institute began collaborating with the Heidelberg Appeal Netherlands Foundation (HAN). This led to the joint founding of the Science and Society Forum (SSF) in October 1997. In an interview in 2007 in the weekly magazine Elsevier, Frits Böttcher, now 91 years old, stated that the Global Institute had another employee besides him at the time. It is unclear whether ESEF and SSF are still active. HAN was merged with De Groene Rekenkamer in 2008.

Death
Frits Böttcher died on November 23, 2008 at the age of 93.

Bibliography (incomplete)
The dielectric constant of liquids, Luctor et Emergo, 1940
Chemistry and society. Speech on the occasion of accepting the position of professor of physical chemistry at the University of Leiden on May 16, 1947, University Press, 1947
Theory of Electrical Polarization, Elsevier, 1952
De graphology, together with AD de Groot and HR Wijngaarden, Dutch Association for Industrial Psychology, 1954
Chemical aspects of atherosclerosis, together with M. Schneider, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1966
The morning has begun: future research (CJF Böttcher et al.), Samsom, 1967
Aspect of the chemical and toxicological society of the environment, Forum for Science, Economy and Politics e.V., 1969
Work for the Future, together with WJ Beek and JDM Kruisinga, among others, Stichting Maatschappij en Onderneming, 1973
Theory of Electrical Polarization – 1. Dielectrics in Static Fields, Elsevier, 1973, ISBN 0-444-41019-8
Theory of electrical polarization - 2. Dielectrics in time-dependent fields, together with P. Bordewijk, Elsevier, 1978, ISBN 0-444-41579-3
Science and Fiction about the Greenhouse Effect and Carbon Dioxide, The Global Institute for the Study of Natural Resources, 1992, ISBN 90-801436-1-8
CO 2 , climate control or politics? , together with H. Metzner and Paul Haupt, 1994, ISBN 3-258-05037-6

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch)

Others: 2 endgame studies are selected on Dutch Website arves.org.  (Selection was made by Peter Siegfried Krug)