Klaus Müntz

Klaus Müntz (born July 30, 1932 in Frankfurt an der Oder ; † November 18, 2015 ) was a German plant physiologist and breeding researcher . From May 1989 to May 1990 he headed the Institute for Plant Biochemistry in Halle and then until the end of 1991 the Central Institute for Genetics and Cultivated Plant Research in Gatersleben , two non-university academy institutes belonging to the research community of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . From 1992 to 1997 he worked as a department head at the Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research , the successor to the Gatersleben Central Institute.

Life

Klaus Müntz was born in Frankfurt in 1932 and, after graduating from school in 1951, initially trained as a teacher at the University of Education in Potsdam . At their mathematics and natural science faculty he received his doctorate in 1961 with a thesis on the carbon and nitrogen balance of Chlorella pyrenoidosa . He decided to pursue a scientific career in the field of plant physiology and was also qualified as a professor in Potsdam seven years later . After initially working at the Potsdam-based department for ecological plant physiology of the Gatersleben Institute for Crop Plant Research of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin , he went to Cuba at the end of the 1960s to set up a department for plant physiology at the Institute for Biology of the Cuban Academy of Sciences build up.

After his return to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1970 he became deputy head of the research area “Basics of Plant Material Production” at the Academy Institute in Gatersleben, which had recently been transformed into the Central Institute for Genetics and Crop Plant Research . In the following period, his research activities focused on the use of molecular biological and genetic engineering methods in the breeding of crops , in particular to investigate their nitrogen change and the biosynthesis of storage proteins . At the beginning of May 1989 he became director of the Institute for Biochemistry of Plants in Halle, which also belongs to the Research Association of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . After the political change in the GDR in 1989/1990, he returned to Gatersleben a year later and took over the management of the Central Institute at the beginning of May 1990 as Dieter Mettin's successor until its dissolution at the end of 1991.

At the Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research , which was founded in 1992 as the successor to the Central Institute, he was in charge of the Department of Molecular Cell Biology until his retirement in July 1997. During this time, his research interests included the investigation of structure-activity relationships of storage proteins in plant seeds , the application of genetic engineering to increase the methionine content in the seeds of legumes, and the investigation of the role of proteases in the formation and breakdown of storage proteins. From 1986 to 2000, Klaus Müntz was editor of the journal "Biochemie und Physiologie der Pflanzen" and its follow-up publication , the "Journal of Plant Physiology". From 1988 he belonged to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . He died in November 2015.

Works (selection)

• Plant physiology internship. Part 1: Mineral nutrition, water balance and aeration system of the plants. Berlin 1960
• Metabolism of Plants: Selected Areas of Physiology. Berlin 1966 and 1973, licensed edition Cologne 1976
• Plants nitrogen metabolism. Jena 1984
• The Gatersleben Institute and its history - genetics and crop research in three political systems. Berlin 2012

literature

• Ulrich Wobus : Laudation for Klaus Müntz on the occasion of his 70th birthday. In: Journal of Plant Physiology. 159/2002. Urban & Fischer Verlag, pp. 1279/1280, ISSN  0176-1617

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary from December 5, 2015
2. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Klaus Müntz at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on January 11, 2017.