Alfred Winterstein
Alfred Winterstein (born February 7, 1899 in Zurich , † September 16, 1960 in Tokyo ) was a Swiss chemist and lecturer.
Life
Alfred Winterstein was born on February 7, 1899 in Zurich, where he attended primary school and then secondary school. Through the professional activity of his father Ernst Winterstein, who taught as a full professor for general and physiological chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, he came into contact with chemistry since he was a child. So he began studying chemistry at the ETH in autumn 1917. After graduating in 1921, he deepened his dissertation in the field of biochemistry in saponins and received his doctorate in 1923 under Hermann Staudinger (Nobel Prize 1953).
He then became an assistant to his teacher and later Nobel Prize winner Richard Kuhn . In 1929, Winterstein completed his habilitation with his thesis "On the knowledge of the ethylene bond" under Kuhn. In the same year he was appointed head of the chemical department of the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (since 1948 Max Planck Institute) for medical research in Heidelberg, where he was followed by Winterstein.
Germany
A little later, Alfred Winterstein acquired a second venia legendi with his inaugural lecture “The basic chemical problems of life” . In Heidelberg his interest in biochemical problems grew. In addition to further investigations of the saponin series, he mainly dealt with natural plant substances, especially with the constitution and structure elucidation of carotenoids .
Thus Winterstein has particularly been earned in the working group to Richard Kuhn, when he ancient attempts of the Russian botanist Mikhail Zwet for the chromatographic separation of Chloropyhlls resumed and could show that by adsorption on powdered sugar preparative separation of chlorophyll a and can be performed b.
Alfred Winterstein thus made a significant contribution to the early success of this new separation method. His detailed work instructions on the “fractionation and purification of plant substances according to the principle of chromatographic adsorption analysis” in Klein's Handbook of Plant Analysis in 1933 and his numerous lectures with demonstration experiments helped chromatography achieve its final breakthrough in a very short time. Over 60 publications by Winterstein during this time testify to the intensive research in this area.
A lecture given by Winterstein in Cambridge in 1933, in which he demonstrated the separation of crude carotene using a calcium carbonate column, gave the British Nobel Prize winner Archer JP Martin the first ideas for his later, fundamental theoretical and practical chromatography work.
Switzerland
As a result of the research on carotene, Winterstein's work deepened in the direction of hematology . In 1934 he was appointed head of a biochemical working group in Basel for the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche. At this time, the German doctor and hematologist Rudolf Juergens began and promoted a blood coagulation program at Roche. Here Winterstein found the ground for his further research into blood coagulation and vascular diseases and thus the diagnosis, prophylaxis and treatment of thrombosis, embolism and myocardial infarction. In these questions he had an ideal research partner in his brother Oscar Winterstein, professor of surgery at the University of Zurich - a direct link from the laboratory to the hospital bed.
During this time, Winterstein's department managed a number of successful products under the trade names Liquemin , Synkavit, Dicumarol , Thrombokinase , Heparin , Trombin and a few more.
In 1953 Alfred Winterstein and his team developed Phenprocoumon , better known under the trade name Marcoumar . It is probably the most important achievement in his career, as the anticoagulant is still widely used today.
A further 50 publications on this topic testify to the intensive research in this area, while Winterstein continued his work as a lecturer at the ETH in the field of biochemistry.
In September 1960, Alfred Winterstein, now regarded as a hematologist of international renown, died in Tokyo during a lecture tour through Asia . He left a wife and two sons.
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/028983/2014-11-11/
- ^ Winterstein, Alfred: Contributions to the knowledge of the saponins . Ed .: ETH Zurich. Weida i. Thür., Zurich, November 15, 1923.
- ↑ School board minutes online - content-view.html. Retrieved January 12, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d Ursula Wintermeyer: The roots of chromatography . GIT Verlag GmbH, Darmstadt 1989, ISBN 3-921956-82-X , p. 52 .
- ^ A b Hans Conrad Peyer: Roche - history of a company 1896-1996 . Editiones Roche, Basel 1996, ISBN 3-907770-57-9 , p. 24 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Winterstein, Alfred |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 7, 1899 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Zurich |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 16, 1960 |
| Place of death | Tokyo |