Günter Wächershäuser
Günter Wächtershäuser (* 1938 in Gießen ) is honorary professor for evolutionary biochemistry at the University of Regensburg and a Munich patent attorney . In the early 1980s he developed a theory about the chemical evolution of the first living beings on mineral surfaces, the theory of the iron-sulfur world .
Life
Wächtershäuser studied chemistry from 1958 to 1965 at the University of Marburg , where he received his doctorate in chemistry in 1965. From 1966 he trained as a patent attorney in a German law firm and at Eastman Kodak Co. in the USA, in 1969 he was licensed as a patent attorney in Munich, and in 1970 he founded what is now Wächtershäuser & Hartz. In 1983 he made personal acquaintance with the philosopher Karl Popper , whose recommendation enabled him to be published in specialist journals. In 1988 he published his theory on the origin of life for the first time. The chemist Claudia Huber carried out experiments at the Technical University of Munich to test his theory, also with the microbiologist Karl Stetter he worked together.
Origin of life in the iron-sulfur world
According to Wächershäuser, life on earth originated on the surface of iron - sulfur minerals, i.e. sulphides that are still formed today through geological processes in deep-sea volcanoes, so-called black smokers , and which may have occurred much more frequently in the early days of the earth . The advantage of this concept over other theories is that it can explain how the formation of biomolecules could be linked to a continuously available and reliable energy source. This energy source consists in the reduction of partially oxidized iron-sulfur minerals such as pyrite with hydrogen and provides enough energy for the endergonic synthesis reactions of monomeric building blocks of biomolecules and for their polymerization .
Awards
Wächtershäuser received the annual honor of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1993 , an honorary professorship for evolutionary biochemistry from the University of Regensburg in 1994 and the Bonn chemistry prize in 1999 .
Fonts
- Origin of Life: Life as We Don't Know It In: Science. 289. (5483), August 25, 2000, pp. 1307-1308 (English)
- Evolution of the First Metabolic Cycles In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 87, January 1990, pp. 200–204 (PDF; 1.09 MB, English)
Web links
- Roland Knauer spat into the primordial soup on Günter Wächtershäuser and his theory in: Die Zeit , November 13, 1992
- A hellish beginning - The origin of life in a volcanic iron-sulfur world Audio recording of a lecture on November 20, 2007 (MP3 file), part of a public lecture series on evolution at the University of Göttingen
- The Origin of Life in a Volcanic Iron-Sulfur World - From Chemical Necessity to Genetic Chance. Contribution to a book by G. Wachstershäuser in: O. Betz, H. Köhler (Ed.) (2008): Die Evolution des Lebendigen, Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 81–96
- Michael Marshall: The secret of how life on earth began , on: BBC - Earth, October 31, 2016
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Guard houses, Günter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German patent attorney and biochemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | to water |