Albert Frey-Wyssling

Albert Frey-Wyssling

Albert Friedrich Frey-Wyssling , born Albert Frey , (born November 8, 1900 in Küsnacht , † August 30, 1988 in Meilen ) was a Swiss botanist.

biography

Frey-Wyssling came from a family of teachers and, after attending the secondary school in Zurich, studied natural sciences and especially botany at the ETH Zurich from 1919 . In 1924 he received his doctorate with a dissertation in plant physiology in Zurich ( calcium oxalate monohydrate and trihydrate in plants: a physiological study based on the phase theory ). From 1923 he was an assistant at the ETH and during this time research stays in Jena (with Hermann Ambronn and at the Sorbonne ) and from 1927 a private lecturer, but in 1928 he went to a private Dutch rubber research institute (AVROS) for four years for financial reasons Medan in Sumatra . In 1932 he returned to the ETH Zurich and in 1938 succeeded his teacher Paul Jaccard as a full professor of general botany and plant physiology. In 1957 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . 1957 to 1961 he was rector of the ETH Zurich. In 1970 he retired. In the same year he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

Frey-Wyssling was a pioneer in researching the submicroscopic cell structure of plants and the fine structure of their cell walls, which he began even before the introduction of the electron microscope (and the ultracentrifuge) into biology. He used techniques of polarization microscopy and X-ray crystallography. It was not until 1944 that an electron microscope was introduced at his institute that enabled him (and Kurt Mühlethaler (1919–2002)) to confirm his previously indirectly obtained knowledge about the fine structure of cells. Frey-Wyssling is therefore also considered a pioneer in molecular biology.

He is also known for his contributions to rubber formation and the excretion of higher plants in general from his time in Sumatra. He was an advisor to the Swiss tobacco growers. His original name was Frey, and he adopted the addition of Frey-Wyssling in 1928 after marrying Margrit Wyssling. He was a citizen of Olten and from 1928 of Küsnacht.

Frey-Wyssling had been a foreign member of the Royal Society since 1957 . In 1941 he became a member and in 1977 an honorary member of the Leopoldina . In 1963 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1949 he received the Marcel Benoist Prize and in 1958 the Schleiden Medal . He was five times honorary doctor.

Fonts

• with Hermann Ambronn: The polarization microscope 1926
• The excretion of matter in higher plants, Springer 1935
• Submicroscopic morphology of protoplasm and its derivatives, Borntraeger 1938
• Metabolism of plants, 2nd edition, Gutenberg Book Guild 1949
• Submicroscopic morphology of protoplasm, 2nd edition, Elsevier 1953
• The submicroscopic structure of the cytoplasm, Springer 1955
• The plant cell wall, Springer 1959
• The plant cell-wall, Tischler, Linsbauer: Handbuch der Pflanzenphysiologie, Volume 3, Part 4, Borntraeger 1976
• with Mühlethaler: Ultrastructural plant cytology: with an introduction to molecular biology, Elsevier 1965
• Comparative organellography of the cytoplasm, Protoplasmologia, Volume 3, Springer 1973
• Teaching and Research. Autobiographical Memoirs, Stuttgart 1984

Web links

• Thomas Fuchs: Albert Frey-Wyssling. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• On his 80th birthday, Natural Research Society Zurich, pdf
• ETH library on Frey-Wyssling's research trips to Sumatra from 1928 to 1931

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member entry of Albert Frey-Wyssling at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on October 19, 2015.
2. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 27, 2020 .