Heinrich Matthaei

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Heinrich Matthaei (left) and Marshall Nirenberg (right) at the NIH in Bethesda in 1961

Johannes Heinrich Matthaei (born May 4, 1929 in Bonn ) is a German biochemist and former director of the Molecular Genetics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen and Professor of Biochemistry and Neurobiology in Göttingen. From 1960 to 1962 he was a post-doctoral student at the NIH in Bethesda , Maryland . There he succeeded in 1961 together with Marshall Warren Nirenberg, the first identification of a genetic coding unit . Nirenberg received the Nobel Prize in 1968 for their joint research .

Matthaei, the son of Rupprecht Matthaei and grandson of Adelbert Matthaei , studied at the University of Bonn with a doctorate in 1956.

Matthaei designed and carried out the decisive series of experiments in the Poly-U experiment in Bethesda, which led to the deciphering of the codon UUU for the amino acid phenylalanine on May 27, 1961 and thus to the identification of the first code word. As a result of the experiment, together with Marshall Nirenberg, he succeeded in clearing up the essential components of the alphabet. The genetic code was broken. The experiment marked the end of a worldwide race to understand the genetic code. The following complete decipherment of the code opened the most important experimental access to molecular genetics. Matthaei and Nirenberg published their work with strictly alternating authorship. This emphasizes the same weight of author to the outside world. After his decisive discovery, Matthaei published a large number of results that contribute to an understanding of the function of the genetic code in gene expression, namely protein biosynthesis. His habilitation thesis from 1966 is entitled The biochemical analysis of the genetic code .

Matthaei was head of a working group at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen since 1963. In 1973 he was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and took over the management of the Molecular Genetics department . From 1973 he was also an adjunct professor at the University of Göttingen . On January 1, 1983, a separate Matthaei research center was set up in the Max Planck Society , which was closed in 1985 because Matthaei left at his own request. In the 1970s and 1980s he dealt with neurobiology.

Today Heinrich Matthaei lives as emeritus of the Max Planck Society in Göttingen . He deals with questions that border on natural philosophy (according to the entry in the Kürschner with supramaterial forces and energies, theory of consciousness and processes for the production and measurement of informative life energy units, for which he also holds a patent (1999)).

In 1965 he received the chemistry prize of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Publications

literature

  • Hans-Jörg Rheinberger : Experimental Systems - A History of Protein Synthesis in the Test Tube . Wallstein Verlag , ISBN 3-89244-454-4 .
  • Matthaei research center in the Max Planck Society. In: Eckart Henning , Marion Kazemi: Handbook on the history of the institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science 1911–2011 - data and sources. Berlin 2016, Part 2: Institutes and research centers MZ. Pages 951–952 ( online , 75 MB, PDF).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Birth and career dates Kürschner, Deutscher Schehrtenkalender, 2009
  2. ↑ Johann Grolle: The whole reality . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 2012, p. 128-130 ( online - January 2, 2012 ).
  3. ^ Rupprecht Matthaei , NDB
  4. ↑ H. Matthaei, Peter Uwe Witte, Microchemical Methods for Neurobiological Investigations, Springer 1980
  5. ^ Entry in Kürschner, Deutscher Gelehrtenkalender, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Matthaei, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Matthaei, Johannes Heinrich; Matthaei, J. Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn