Horst Tobias Witt

Horst Tobias Witt (born March 1, 1922 in Bremen ; † May 14, 2007 in Berlin ) was a German physicist . He was instrumental in researching photosynthesis . In 1993, together with his wife Ingrid, he succeeded in producing a precise crystalline representation of Photosystem I for the first time worldwide . In 2001 he worked on the crystalline representation of Photosystem II and thus contributed significantly to the understanding of how it works.

Life

After his military service as a fighter pilot, he studied physics from 1945 to 1950 at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. Witt was with a work on solid state physics at Robert Pohl PhD . In 1950 he became a scientific assistant to Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer at what was then the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry, now the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry . In 1962 he was appointed full professor of physical chemistry at the Max Volmer Institute at the Technical University of Berlin .

National and international honors and prizes document the high level of international recognition. In 2001 he received an honorary doctorate from the Georg-August University of Göttingen for his scientific work on photosynthesis. In 2006 he was honored for his research on protein-cofactor interactions in biological processes (Collaborative Research Center 498) with the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Since 1970 he has been a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Halle , an extraordinary member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and the Austrian Academy of Sciences . In 1990 he received the Otto Warburg Medal .

literature

• Wolfgang Junge, William Rutherford: Horst Tobias Witt (1922 - 2007). Obituary in: Nature , Volume 448, July 26, 2007, p. 425
• Lothar Jaenicke : Horst Tobias Witt - March 21, 1922 Bremen - May 14, 2007 (Berlin): Ancestor of biophysical photosynthesis research in Germany. in: Biospektrum 7/2007, pp. 815f., online
• Gernot Renger : Horst Tobias Witt (March 1, 1922 - May 14, 2007) (obituary to Witt), in: Photosyntheses Research (2008) 96: 5-8.

Web links

• Literature by and about Horst Tobias Witt in the catalog of the German National Library
• idw-online.de: Honorary doctorate for Prof. Dr. Horst T. Witt , June 8, 2001 (with portrait photo)
• "Structure of photosystem II resolved at 3 angstroms"
• Report of the TU Berlin on the death of Witt