Ernst Klenk (biochemist)

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Ernst Klenk (born October 14, 1896 in Pfalzgrafenweiler ; † December 29, 1971 in Cologne ) was a German biochemist.

life and work

Klenk's father had a farm and a brewery in the Black Forest. Klenk didn't want to take over his father's brewery and went to high school in Tübingen. After serving as a soldier from 1914 to 1919 in World War I , he studied chemistry at the University of Tübingen . There he received his doctorate in 1923 at the Institute for Physiological Chemistry under the guidance of Percy Brigl (1885–1945). rer. nat. PhD ; the topic of the work was the behavior of dipeptides and elastin to phthalic anhydride . He then received the position as second assistant to Hans Thierfelder . After his habilitation , he became a private lecturer there in 1926 and an adjunct professor at the Institute for Physiological Chemistry in 1930, which was headed by Franz Knoop after Thierfelder's death .

Klenk joined the NSDAP in 1933 and the SA in 1934 .

He turned down a call to Marburg to succeed Friedrich Kutscher (1866-1942) and became professor at the University of Cologne in 1936 , where he headed the Institute of Physiological Chemistry of the Medical Faculty from 1937 to 1967, which he built up. After the Second World War, he rebuilt the destroyed institute, which was evacuated to Marburg in 1944. From 1947 to 1948 he was dean of the medical faculty. In 1961/62 he was rector of the University of Cologne, during which time he also helped found the University of Bochum.

He was Vice President from 1956 to 1959 and President of the Society for Biological Chemistry from 1959 to 1962.

Klenk was a pioneer in the research of biolipids , their metabolism and related diseases. He discovered various lipids in the nervous system such as the gangliosides (which he named) and various cerebrosides, and he found the cause of Niemann-Pick disease (abnormal accumulation of sphingomyelin ) and found the cerebroside accumulated in Gaucher's disease . He discovered that glycoproteins were cell receptors for certain viruses ( myxoviruses ).

He was co-editor of Hoppe-Seyler's magazine for physiological chemistry .

In 1972 he received the Otto Warburg Medal posthumously , the first Heinrich Wieland Prize in 1964, the Stouffer Prize in 1966, the Lipid Prize of the American Oil Chemists Society and in 1962 the Norman Medal of the Society for Fat Research . He was an honorary member of the American Society of Biological Chemistry and the Society for Physiological Chemistry , a member of the Leopoldina and an honorary member of the Hungarian Society of Neurology. Klenk received the university plaque from the University of Cologne and an honorary doctorate from the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne.

He had been married to Grete Aldinger (who had studied with him in Tübingen) since 1937 and had three sons, Hans-Dieter Klenk , Fritz Klenk and Wolfgang Klenk.

Fonts

  • with Hans Thierfelder: The chemistry of cerebrosides and phosphatides. Springer, Berlin 1930.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Klenk. In: Rector portraits. University of Cologne, accessed on January 22, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Named after the industrialist Vernon Stouffer (1901–1974)
  3. ↑ Named after the natural scientist Wilhelm Normann (1870–1939)
personal data
SURNAME Klenk, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Pfalzgrafenweiler
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1971
Place of death Cologne