Otmar von Verschuer had spent much of his professional life investigating the mutability of human characteristics when, in 1945, he embarked upon his greatest act of metamorphosis.
With millions dead and his country in ruins, Verschuer – a German geneticist, eugenicist and Nazi — adopted the posture of a humble scientist untainted by anti-Semitism.
"I have always kept away from politics, with the result that I had many hardships during the Nazi days," Verschuer wrote to a colleague.
