Alwin M. Pappenheimer

Alwin Max Pappenheimer Junior (born November 25, 1908 in Cedarhurst (New York) , † March 21, 1995 in Cambridge (Massachusetts) ) was an American chemist, immunologist and bacteriologist, known for research on bacterial toxins , especially the diphtheria toxin , whose research he devoted his scientific career.

He was the son of a well-known pathologist at Columbia University Medical School of the same name, his brother was the physiologist John Pappenheimer . Pappenheimer studied from 1925 at Harvard University , where he was one of the first students in the newly established biochemistry course and received his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1932. He also excelled as a rower against Yale. As a post-doctoral student , he spent two years in Henry Dale's laboratory at the National Institute of Medical Research in London. As a scientist at the Massachusetts State Antitoxin and Vaccine Laboratory in Jamaica Plains, where he was from 1935, he succeeded in isolating and preparing diphtheria toxin in crystalline form. From 1938 he was Assistant Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Pennsylvania and from 1941 at the invitation of Colin MacLeod at New York University , where both set up a department of microbiology. During World War II, he was a captain in the Medical Corps, doing research in bacteriology in military research laboratories in the South Pacific. In 1945 he continued his work as a professor in the Department of Immunology and Bacteriology at New York University. In 1956 he was head of the microbiology department. From 1958 he was professor of biology at Harvard (and head of the Board of Tutors in Biochemical Sciences ), where he carried out research beyond his retirement in 1979. He continued research into diphtheria toxin and the mechanism by which it damages cells in the 1950s. Among other things, he and co-workers found that it inhibits protein synthesis. His pupil and later colleague R. John Collier was one of his employees .

In 1941 he received the Eli Lilly and Company Research Award . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957) and 1954/1955 President of the American Association of Immunologists . In 1990 he and John Collier received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize .

He was married to Pauline Forbes since 1938. The couple had two daughters and one son.

literature

• AM Pappenheimer Recollections - the story of a toxic protein 1888-1992 , Protein Science, Volume 2, 1993, pp. 292-298

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times, March 24, 1995
• Obituary at the National Academy of Sciences by H. Sherwood Lawrence, pdf