Heinz Rüterjans

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Heinz Rüterjans (born February 29, 1936 in Münster ; † March 16, 2020 ) was a German researcher and expert on the use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in basic research . From 1978 to 2003 he was professor of physical chemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and is considered a pioneer in the field of structural biology of biomacromolecules .

Life

Rüterjans studied chemistry and received his doctorate in 1965 from the University of Münster . He was then entrusted as a postdoc with Harold A. Scheraga at Cornell University to use the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) method to study the active center of ribonucleases , the structure of which had not yet been clarified. The use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy on biological macromolecules was something completely new at the time, and it turned out that the 60 megahertz device used by Scheraga generated a magnetic field that was too weak to obtain meaningful representations of the NMR lines.

After his return to Germany in 1966, Rüterjans initially worked as an assistant at the University of Münster. From 1969 he was department director at the Institute for Aerobiology of the Fraunhofer Society . In 1972 he completed his habilitation and in the same year he was appointed to a professorship for biophysical chemistry at the University of Münster, where in the early 1970s he succeeded in obtaining funding for the first NMR spectrometer in Germany, "which contained a superconducting magnet, which enabled a resolution of 270 megahertz. At the same time, it was the first device with an automatically integrated Fourier transformation, a mathematical operation that converts a time-dependent function into a frequency-dependent one, which translates the resonances from extremely short radio pulses into a readable spectrum and thus significantly increases the NMR sensitivity. "

In 1978 Rüterjans accepted a call to Frankfurt am Main , where a professorship for physical chemistry was set up especially for him - his 270-megahertz device moved with him to Frankfurt. The German Research Foundation financed his institute in the following years, even more powerful 600 and 700 megahertz devices. In a review of his tenure in Frankfurt it was said that NMR spectroscopy on biomacromolecular systems “stands and falls with the availability of molecules in which nitrogen and carbon are enriched with the non-radioactive, but NMR-active isotopes 15N and 13C. "Heinz Rüterjans published" for the first time in 1978 with a groundbreaking work on isotope labeling on nucleotides. "

Honors

  • For his services to clarify the structure of biomacromolecules and for the development of novel active pharmaceutical ingredients, Rüterjans was awarded the A.-D.-Speransky Gold Medal by the Scientific Committee of the Institute for Pathology and Pathophysiology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow foreign scientists.
  • In 1997 he was awarded the Gay Lussac Humboldt Prize .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rüterjans, Heinz. In: Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar Online. degruyter.com, accessed on June 29, 2020 (founded by Joseph Kürschner , constantly updated, restricted-access online edition).
  2. ↑ Death: Heinz Rüterjans. ( Memento from June 25, 2020 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Pioneer of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy goes. On: idw-online.de from May 7, 2003.
  4. ↑ Launch pad for nanocosmologists: Heinz Rüterjans established biomolecular magnetic resonance in Frankfurt. (PDF; 314 kB) In: Research Frankfurt. No. 2, 2014, pp. 65-68.
  5. ↑ a b Retired: Heinz Rüterjans. (PDF; 767 kB) In: UniReport. May 28, 2003, p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Rüterjans, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physical chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Muenster
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 2020