Hans Günter Schlegel

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Hans Günter Schlegel (born October 24, 1924 near Leipzig ; † March 22, 2013 in Göttingen ) was a German microbiologist who worked as a university professor at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 1958 .

Life path

Hans Günter Schlegel was born into a family of teachers. After graduating from high school, he served in the air force for three years . After the war Schlegel studied natural sciences in Leipzig and Halle with the aim of becoming a high school teacher. During his experimental doctoral thesis with Johannes Buder , head of the Botanical Institutes of the University of Halle, on the photobiology of Chromatium okenii and Thiospirillum jenense , he discovered his penchant for research. He received his doctorate in 1950 with a major in botany at the University of Halle and then worked as an assistant at Kurt Mothes' laboratory in Gaterslebenwhere he was able to expand his experience in plant physiology and general microbiology. After his habilitation , he received the venia legendi for microbiology and plant biochemistry in 1954 at the University of Halle and was a lecturer there until 1956. With the help of scholarships, he was able to study and research stays in Munich ( Feodor Lynen ) and later in Cleveland ( Lester O. Krampitz , Harland G. Wood ).

In 1958 he was appointed to the chair of microbiology at the agricultural faculty of the University of Göttingen.

Hans G. Schlegel became the editor of the Archives for Microbiology in 1959 and in 1969 (from volume 66) took over the function of editor-in-chief from his predecessor August Rippel-Baldes . Schlegel's book General Microbiology (1st edition 1969) is considered the first comprehensive microbiological textbook in German and is still published today - with other editors - meanwhile (2017) in the 10th edition. It is considered the standard textbook in microbiology and has been translated into eight languages. He published over 350 scientific articles and several books and had numerous students in Göttingen, where he worked as a school educator in microbiology.

Honors and memberships

The German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , of which he has been a member since 1966, honored Schlegel with the Cothenius Medal in 2005 for his, as the certificate says, "extensive life's work dedicated to microbiology in research and teaching".

He was chairman of the mathematical-physical class and from 1984 to 1988 vice-president and president of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , of which he had been a member since 1965.

In 1992 he received the Philip Morris Research Award . Schlegel received several honorary doctorates.

Fonts

  • General microbiology. Thieme, Stuttgart 1969; 5th, revised and expanded edition, with the collaboration of Karin Schmidt, ibid 1981, ISBN 3-13-444605-7 .
  • ed. with Joseph W. Lengeler, Gerhart Drews : Biology of the Prokaryotes. Thieme, Stuttgart 1999.
  • History of microbiology (= Acta Historica. Vol. 28). Leopoldina, Halle (Saale) 1999; 2nd edition 2004.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice , Göttinger Tageblatt , March 30, 2013, accessed on November 28, 2015.
  2. Leopoldina Academy honors Professor Dr. Hans Günter Schlegel (Göttingen) with the Cothenius Medal , Science Information Service , October 7, 2005, accessed on November 28, 2015.