Albert Neuberger

Albert Neuberger (born April 15, 1908 in Haßfurt , † August 14, 1996 in Hampstead, London ) was a British biochemist and physician.

Life

He was the son of a Jewish businessman in the textile industry and studied medicine at the University of Würzburg with a summa cum laude degree , after which he briefly worked in a clinic. In addition to medicine, he also studied chemistry and, during a research stay in Berlin, met the later Nobel Prize winner Ernst Chain , with whom he became friends. Like him, he emigrated to England after the National Socialists came to power in 1933. There he received his doctorate in 1936 under Charles Robert Harington at the University of London on the electrochemistry of amino acids and proteins. In 1939 he went to Cambridge University as a Beit Memorial Fellow to Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1929 Nobel Prize in Medicine). In contrast to other emigrants, his scholarship enabled him to make a relatively good living. In Cambridge he also supervised Frederick Sanger as a doctoral student and published with him. From 1942 he was at the National Institutes for Medical Research in London, but went to India as a nutritionist for the British Army during the war. 1950 to 1955 he headed the biochemistry department at the National Institute for Medical Research. His staff there included the 1952 Nobel Prize winner Archer JP Martin and the later Nobel Prize winner John W. Cornforth . From 1955 to 1973 he was Professor of Chemical Pathology at St Mary's Hospital in London and at the University of London.

From 1958 to 1962 he headed the Wright Fleming Institute at St. Mary's Hospital (formerly headed by Alexander Fleming ) and brought the future Nobel Prize winner Rodney Porter to the institute. After retiring in 1973, he continued research at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School until the 1980s.

plant

He was a pioneer in researching glycoproteins and was the first to prove in 1938, using ovalbumin as an example , that there were proteins that contained sugar components. Before that, proteins (with the exception of the mucous components of the mucins ) were thought to be made up of amino acids and sugar components only to be impurities. Neuberger chose ovalbumin from chicken eggs because it was available in large quantities and therefore accessible to crystallization at a time when the analytical methods in the biochemistry of proteins were still very limited. Due to the war, he was only able to continue his work in the 1950s and in 1956, with Robin Marshall, he found the first group (GlcNAc-Asn, beta- N-acetylglucosamine - asparagine ) from carbohydrates to peptides, simultaneously with other groups.

From 1947 to 1955 he was editor of The Biochemical Journal and from 1968 to 1981 of Biochimica and Biophysica Acta (Managing Editor).

Honors and memberships

He was CBE (1964), Fellow of the Royal Society (1951) and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) and the Royal Society of Chemistry . He was an honorary member of the Biochemical Society and received its Frederick Gowland Hopkins Medal (1960). Neuberger received honorary doctorates from Aberdeen, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Hull. In 1972 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

From 1967 to 1969 he was a board member of the British Biochemical Society.

From 1970 he was chairman of the board of directors of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.

Family and private

Neuberger was married to Lilian Dreyfuß. His sons include the immunologist Michael Neuberger , the Chief Justice in Great Britain David Neuberger , the medical professor James Neuberger (University of Birmingham) and the financial scientist Anthony Neuberger (professor at the University of Warwick). His brother Herman Neuberger was a rabbi. Neuberger's family was very religious, and Neuberger also later resumed studying Hebrew in his youth. He had an apartment in Jerusalem and was there several times a year. For over 20 years he was chairman of the Academic Committee of the Hebrew University Board of Directors.

literature

• AK Allen, HM Muir: Albert Neuberger. April 15, 1908 - August 14, 1996: Elected FRS 1951, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Volume 47, 2001, pp. 369-382
• Nathan Sharon: Albert Neuberger (1908-1996), founder of modern glykoprotein research, Glycobiology, Volume 7, 1997, pp. X-XIII, pdf

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neuberger, Sanger, The nitrogen of the potato, Biochemical Journal, Volume 36, 1942, pp. 662-671
2. ^ A. Neuberger: Carbohydrates in protein. In: Biochemical Journal. 32, 1938, pp. 1435-1451, doi : 10.1042 / bj0321435 .