Hans Herloff Inhoffen

Hans Herloff Inhoffen (born March 9, 1906 in Döhren near Hanover , † December 31, 1992 in Konstanz ) was a German chemist .

Life

Inhoffen studied in Berlin , Bonn and London and received his doctorate in Berlin in 1931. He then became Adolf Windaus' scientific assistant at the University of Göttingen . There he worked on ergosterine . After working at the Courtland Institute of Biochemistry in London, he was deputy head of the main scientific laboratory at Schering from 1936 until the end of the Second World War , where he worked intensively on the structure elucidation and synthesis of sex hormones. Here he and Walter Hohlweg developed the most orally effective estrogen to date, ethinylestradiol, in 1938 .

Inhoffen was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA) of the NSDAP . Little is known about his inner attitude towards National Socialism. The assessments range from "secret opponents of National Socialism" to "little Nazi."

He completed his habilitation in Göttingen in 1943 and was initially a lecturer at the University of Marburg and in 1946 director of the Physiological-Chemical Institute. In 1947 he became professor for organic chemistry at the Technical University of Braunschweig and director of the institute for organic chemistry. There he taught until 1979; from 1947 to 1950 he was rector of the TH Braunschweig. In 1946 he became a member of the Braunschweig Scientific Society .

In 1965 he founded the Institute for Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Biophysics in Braunschweig, today's Helmholtz Center for Infection Research , and was its director until 1970.

In 1959 in Braunschweig he succeeded in the total synthesis of vitamin D 3 and in 1950 des - carotene . In 1960 he was elected a full member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . From 1966 he dealt with photosynthesis , where he succeeded in the partial synthesis of chlorophyll b. ${\displaystyle \beta }$

In 1973 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Hans Herloff Inhoffen Prize , the Inhoffen Medal and the Inhoffen Lecture of the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research are named after him.

Inhoffen's only son is the Roman Catholic moral theologian Peter Inhoffen, born in 1934 .

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a .: Lexicon of important chemists . Harri Deutsch, 1989.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Herloff Inhoffen in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ bayerpharma.com: Milestones in the company's history ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Arbeitskreis Other Geschichte eV (Ed.): Braunschweiger personalities of the 20th century: Short biographies. Döring Dr., Braunschweig 2012.
3. ↑ Peter Inhoffen: Hans Herloff Inhoffen my father - scientist in difficult times ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 13 kB); Lecture at the Ignaz Lieben Symposium 2008 of the Ignaz Lieben Society, Vienna. 
4. ^ ^{A b} Carl Djerassi : This Man's Pill. Sex, art and immortality. Innsbruck 2001, p. 44 f.
5. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 121.
6. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 190, October 9, 1973.
7. ↑ helmholtz-hzi.de: Inhoffen lecture . With biography.