Hans Neurath

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Hans Neurath (born October 29, 1909 in Vienna ; † April 2, 2002 in Seattle ) was an American biochemist who dealt with protein research and was one of the pioneers in it.

life and work

Neurath, the son of a professor of pediatrics at the University of Vienna in 1933 at the University of Vienna with Wolfgang Pauli Josef doctorate in chemistry. The topic of his dissertation was already research on proteins. He then worked as an assistant at Pauli for a year before joining Frederick Donnan's group as a post-doctoral student at the University of London , where he researched proteins and fatty acids as models of biological membranes. He returned briefly to Vienna and then, when the impending annexation of Austria to the German Empire was already emerging, he went to the USA, where he worked at the University of Minnesota with Ross A. Gortner (1885–1942) in agricultural biochemistry and at Harvard University at Edwin J. Cohn was, then a center for protein research, where the protein researchers John Edsall , Jesse Greenstein and Larry Oncley (1910-2004) were. In 1936 he became a George Fisher Baker Fellow and Instructor in Chemistry at Cornell University (where he met Linus Pauling , Peter Debye , Nevil Sidgwick and Karl Landsteiner and, on a visit to Princeton, Albert Einstein , with whom he discussed Einstein's formula for determining molecular weight ) and in 1938 he became an assistant professor at Duke University , where he was a colleague of Philip Handler . During the Second World War, he developed methods for the US Army to eliminate false positive test results for syphilis in blood samples.

In 1950 he founded the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington and headed it until his retirement in 1975. He then worked part-time as the scientific director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) in Seattle. He had been refused a research professorship at his old university, so he looked elsewhere for research funding. That was one reason why he accepted the offer in 1980, scientific director of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Here, however, there were considerable conflicts when he rejected the in his opinion insufficiently scientifically established neutron radiation therapy of his predecessor as director, which also made political waves. Although he prevailed (and the center was fundamentally reformed as a result), he gave up the leadership in 1981 and returned to Seattle.

He was a pioneer in the study of the structure and physical chemistry of proteins, refuting early models such as that of William Astbury (and also that of Linus Pauling on the structure of antibodies). He researched the denaturation of proteins and proteases such as trypsin , chymotrypsin and carboxypeptidase . In particular, he clarified the mechanism of the activation of precursors of enzymes ( zymogens ) and he and his colleagues (Ken Walsh, Ralph Bradshaw , Ko Titani) clarified the primary structure of a number of proteins. He demonstrated that different serine proteases were related to each other, which supported the concept of structural homology of these enzymes.

He was founding editor of the journal Protein Science in 1992 , which he edited until 1998, and of the journal Biochemistry in 1961 , which he edited until 1991, with the other editors coming from his faculty (which was retained as the journal after Neurath left as editor at Duke University by Gordon Hammes ). He also edited the series The Proteins (Academic Press) from 1953 to 1982 (initially with Kenneth Bailey , later with Robert L. Hill ).

In 1961 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and he was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

He was an excellent pianist who also gave chamber music concerts, and was a passionate mountaineer and skier. Neurath was married to Ruth Spitzer Neurath for 41 years, had a son from his first marriage and a stepson and a stepdaughter.

Hans Neurath Award

The Protein Society annually awards him the Hans Neurath Award for protein research in his honor.

Prize winners were:

Hans Neurath Lecture

Thanks to a foundation by his widow and support from ZymoGenetics, the University of Washington holds the annual Neurath Lectures in Biochemistry. The speakers were:

Fonts

  • with BS Hartley: Proteolytic Enzymes, Ann. Rev. Biochem., Vol. 29, 1960, pp. 45-72
  • Evolution of proteolytic enzymes, Science, Volume 224, 1984, pp. 350-357
  • Proteolytic enzymes past and present: the second golden era, Protein Science, Vol. 3, 1994, pp. 1734-1739.
  • The Golden Years of Protein Science, Protein Science, Volume 4, 1995, pp. 1939-1943 (Address at the banquet of the first European Symposium of the Protein Society in Davos, May 30, 1995)
  • From colloids to proteases, Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 2000, pp. 7-15.
  • From proteases to proteomics, Protein Science, Volume 10, 2001, pp. 892-890

literature

  • Edmond H. Fischer, Earl W. Davie, Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences, 2013, pdf

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Prizes of the Protein Society
  2. ↑ With interruption 2010/2011, official website, Neurath Lecture
personal data
SURNAME Neurath, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 2002
Place of death Seattle