Hermann Lehmann (biochemist)

Hermann Lehmann (born July 8, 1910 in Halle (Saale) , † July 13, 1985 in Cambridge ) was a German-born British biochemist .

Live and act

Hermann Lehmann was born to Jewish parents. After attending school in Halle and from 1923 to 1928 at the Kreuzschule in Dresden, he began studying medicine at the University of Freiburg , which he continued in Frankfurt am Main , Berlin and Heidelberg . Due to the increasing discrimination against Jews at German universities in the early 1930s, he completed his studies in Basel in 1934 with a dissertation on the production of hydrochloric acid in the infant stomach after histamine stimulus , which he had written with Ernst Moro in Heidelberg. Since he was not allowed to practice as a doctor in Switzerland, he went back to Heidelberg, where he worked as an unpaid assistant for Otto Meyerhof at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research .

On the mediation of Meyerhof he stayed in 1935 for a short stay with Frederick Gowland Hopkins in Cambridge , where he researched the metabolism in muscles. In April 1936, at the urging of Joseph Needham and his wife, he emigrated to Great Britain and settled in Cambridge. In 1938 he received the Ph.D. with the work Aspects of carbohydrate metabolism in the absence of molecular oxygen . After the outbreak of World War II and the beginning of the western campaign , he was interned in Huyton near Liverpool in May 1940 , but was released in October on the intervention of FG Hopkins. Through the intercession of Sir Charles Sherrington , he received a position in the medical service; initially worked at a hospital in Essex , where he was able to continue his research on energy metabolism . In 1943 he moved to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) in India with a military rank , where he did more research on hematology and especially on anemia . At the end of 1946 he left the RAMC, he was now a British citizen, and went to a college in Uganda as a Colonial Medical Research Fellow for three years . There he worked until 1949 specifically on abnormal hemoglobins and sickle cell anemia and the influence of ethnic origin on hemoglobinopathies .

After returning to England, Lehmann was hired as a clinical pathologist at a hospital in Kent . In 1951 he moved to St Bartholomew's Hospital and became a lecturer in chemical pathology. At this teaching hospital he was able to continue his biochemical research in the field of hematology in his own laboratory. In 1954 he stayed in the USA on a Rockefeller Foundation grant . In 1963 he went as a University Biochemist at the Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. In the MRC Abnormal Hemoglobin Unit, which was the reference laboratory of the World Health Organization (WHO), he devoted himself to the question of the detection and identification of genetic variants of human hemoglobin. In 1963 he was given a chair in clinical biochemistry, in 1974 he became head of the newly established Department of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge . Lehmann worked closely with Max Perutz , who also worked at the university, to elucidate the relationship between the molecular structure of hemoglobin and its normal or abnormal function . In 1977 he retired.

Lehmann received numerous awards and honors. In 1972 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and other scientific societies. In 1981 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . Since 1982 he has been a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1980 he became Commander of the Order of the British Empire . He was an honorary doctorate from the University of Frankfurt am Main .

literature

• John Dacie: Hermann Lehmann, 8 July 1910 - 13 July 1095 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 34 , 1988, pp. 406-449 .
• Robin W. Carrell: Hermann Lehmann, 1910-1985 . In: Trends in Biochemical Sciences . tape 10 , no. 12 , 1985, pp. 468-469 , doi : 10.1016 / 0968-0004 (85) 90201-4 .
• THJ Huisman, GD Efremov, RN Wrightstone: In Memoriam Professor Hermann Lehmann, CBE, FRS . In: Hemoglobin . tape 9 , no. 5 , 1985, pp. iii-iv , doi : 10.3109 / 03630268508997022 .
• Reinhard Rürup (participation: Michael Schüring): Fates and careers. Memorial book for the researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists (=  History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism . Volume 14 ). Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89244-797-9 , Ernst Lehmann, p. 253-256 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Lehmann, Hermann (1910–1985) in the archive of the Royal Society , London
2. ^ Member entry by Hermann Lehmann at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 13, 2018.
3. ↑ Hermann Lehmann's membership entry at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on July 13, 2018.