Burchard Franck

Burchard Franck (born May 6, 1926 in Hamburg ; † February 21, 2017 in Münster ) was a German chemist and university professor . His research focus was in the field of natural product chemistry . He taught at the universities of Kiel , Münster and Göttingen , among others , and was awarded the Richard Kuhn Medal .

Life

academic career

Burchard Franck was born in Hamburg in 1926 and had to suffer from the consequences of the National Socialist rule before his training . After a finished during the teenage years of military service he got after the war ended in Soviet captivity . After returning to Germany in 1946, he studied chemistry at the University of Hamburg and at the Georg-August University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate from Hans Brockmann in 1952 (subject: "Investigation of rhodomycin, a red-colored antibiotic made from actinomycetes"). After a time as a research assistant , he completed his habilitation in 1959 in Göttingen and, four years later, accepted the chair for organic chemistry at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . During his time there, he completed several visiting professorships abroad, for example at MIT , the University of Connecticut and the University of Oslo . He left Kiel in 1968 and was appointed to the chair for organic chemistry at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster .

In Münster he was increasingly involved in the academic self-administration, so he promoted the expansion of the organic-chemical institute and temporarily worked as the department dean. He subsequently turned down calls at other universities (1973 Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn ; 1977 Georg-August-Universität Göttingen). In 1980 Franck was awarded the Richard Kuhn Medal of the Society of German Chemists and in 1981 the Adolf Windaus Medal of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. From 1984 until his retirement in 1991 he also worked as a reviewer for the German Research Foundation ; in addition, he was visiting professor at the Universities of Lausanne , Geneva and Friborg (all 1984) as well as Guangdong , Shanghai and Beijing (all 1985).

In addition to his academic work, he was also a co-editor of various specialist journals, including Angewandte Chemie and Justus Liebig's Annalen der Chemie .

research

Franck's research focus was on natural product chemistry . Among other things, he dealt with the isolation, structure elucidation and biosynthesis of new active ingredients and mainly used isotope labeling in terms of method . Examples of his research are his findings in the field of novel alkaloid syntheses and photosensitizers based on porphyrin .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} uni-muenster.de: Prof. Dr. Burchard Franck is 75 years old. ( Memento from March 10, 2014 in the archive.today web archive ) May 3, 2001, accessed on April 17, 2014.
2. ^ Memorial page by Burchard Franck. Retrieved March 4, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Who is it? - Burchard Franck. In: Nachrichten aus Chemie, Technik und Laboratorium, Volume 28, Number 10, pp. 732-734; doi: 10.1002 / nadc.19800281009 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Vita Francks on the website of the Institute for Organic Chemistry at the University of Münster (accessed on April 17, 2014).