Friedrich Bonhoeffer

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Friedrich Johann Bonhoeffer (born August 10, 1932 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German physicist , molecular biologist and neuroscientist .

Life

He is the son of Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer and brother of Martin Bonhoeffer . Bonhoeffer studied physics and received his doctorate in nuclear physics in Göttingen in 1958 (Dr. rer. Nat.). He was a post-doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley , where he studied the physical chemistry of macromolecules. From 1961 he was at the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tübingen and group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory in Tübingen. From 1972 he was director of the biophysical department at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen (until the MPI for Virus Research was renamed in 1984).

Bonhoeffer pioneered the study of DNA replication in the 1960s and 1970s. Together with Heinz Schaller, he developed a new type of system for the in vitro synthesis of DNA and, with Schaller, he identified DNA polymerase III. From the 1980s he turned to developmental biology, looking in particular for the molecules postulated by Roger Sperry that were responsible for the morphogenesis of connections in the brain and that controlled the growth of axons in the embryo, for example from retina to tectum . The first such molecules ( Ephrin A ) were identified by his laboratory in Tübingen and independently by John Flanagan at Harvard.

In 1996 Bonhoeffer received the Neuronal Plasticity Prize , in 2007 the Ralph W. Gerard Prize and in 2020 the Gruber Prize for Neuroscience . He has been a member of the Leopoldina since 1994 .

He is the father of Tobias Bonhoeffer .

literature

  • William A. Harris, Christine E. Holt (Editors), Foreword to Journal of Neurobiology, Volume 59, 2004, No. 1 (Dedication to Friedrich Bonhoeffer)

Fonts

  • with BK Müller, U. Drescher: Novel gene families involved in neural pathfinding , Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev., Vol. 6, 1996, 469-474
  • with U. Drescher, C. Kremoser, C. Handwerker, J. Löschinger, M. Noda: In vitro guidance of retinal ganglion cell axons by RAGS, a 25 kDa tectal protein related to ligands for Eph receptor tyrosine kinases , Cell, Volume 82 , 1995, pp. 359-370.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Smith, Schaller, Bonhoeffer: DNA synthesis in vitro , Nature, Volume 226, 1970, pp. 711-713.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Bonhoeffer's member's entry at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on June 30, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Bonhoeffer, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bonhoeffer, Friedrich Johann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist, molecular biologist and neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main