Helmut Zahn

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Helmut Zahn (born June 13, 1916 in Erlangen ; † November 14, 2004 in Aachen ) was a German chemist who became known for the first synthesis of insulin (1963).

The prerequisite for the synthesis was the elucidation of the insulin structure, which was published in 1955 by Frederick Sanger , who was honored with the Nobel Prize in 1958 for this .

life and work

He studied chemistry at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and received his doctorate in 1940 . His doctoral supervisor was Egon Elöd . In 1948 he completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg and in 1952 he was appointed first director of the newly founded German Wool Research Institute (DWI) at RWTH Aachen University . In 1957 he was appointed to the newly founded chair for textile chemistry at RWTH Aachen University and retired in 1981, but he continued to run the DWI until 1985. Hartwig Höcker was his successor .

Zahn was (co) author of over 700 publications. Well over 100 doctorates were completed in his institute.

In Aachen in 1968, Zahn was one of the signatories of the “ Marburg Manifesto ”, together with many other professors from RWTH Aachen University , which formed an academic front against the emerging co-determination at universities. Zahn had honorary doctorates a . a. from the universities of Barcelona, ​​Belfast, Bradford, Düsseldorf, Leeds and Liège. In 1979 he received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art , and in 1987 the Wilhelm Exner Medal . In 1982 he was accepted as a foreign member of the then Academy of Sciences of the USSR .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zahn Helmut, Johannes Meienhofer, Brandenburg Dietrich, et al .: Synthesis of insulin chains and their combination to insulin-active preparations. In: Journal of Nature Research B . 18, 1963, pp. 1120-1121 ( online ).
  2. ^ AP Ryle, F. Sanger, R. Kitai: The disulphide bonds of insulin. In: Biochemical Journal. Volume 60, 1955, pp. 541-556; PMID 13249947 ; PMC 1216151 (free full text).
  3. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Helmut Zahn at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2018.
  4. ↑ Wording and list of signatures of the manifesto against the politicization of universities ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Blätter für German and international politics , born in 1968; Issue 8 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dearchiv.de
  5. ^ Marburg Manifesto , in: Der Spiegel of July 22, 1968
  6. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Helmut Gustav Zahn. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 5, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Zahn, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH gain
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 2004
Place of death Aachen