Klaus Wegmann

Klaus Wegmann (born July 27, 1932 in Annweiler am Trifels ; † July 12, 2011 in Tübingen ) was a German biochemist who dealt with plant biochemistry. He was a professor at the University of Tübingen .

Life

After graduating from high school (1952) in Landau in der Pfalz, Wegmann studied chemistry at the TH Karlsruhe , where he received his intermediate diploma in 1955. He then worked in 1956/57 at the Geilweilerhof Institute for Vine Breeding with Ernst Bayer (who later went to Tübingen), where he was interested in plant biochemistry started. He examined the blue coloring matter of vines ( anthocyanins ) and cornflowers with paper chromatography. At that time he was also involved in the construction of the first gas chromatograph in Germany, which was used to analyze the ingredients of wine. From 1957 to 1963 he worked at Dielectra in Cologne as a research chemist and from 1963/64 at the Institute for Cell Research of the Fraunhofer Society in Finthen . He then continued his chemistry and biology studies in Tübingen, where he received his doctorate in 1968 under Helmut Metzner . The topic of the dissertation was the fixation of carbon dioxide in a green alga ( Dunaliella ), which he examined with radioactive isotopes. The green alga was also later one of his preferred living creatures, on which he studied the regulation of osmotic pressure depending on environmental conditions and the production of glycerine . In 1971 he completed his habilitation in Tübingen, where he became a university lecturer in 1975 and a professor of plant biochemistry in 1980. In 1997 he retired. After that he was very active in Romania, where from 2003 he was visiting professor at the private Vasile Goldiș University in Arad , founded in 1990 . He died after a serious illness.

He dealt with the ecological biochemistry of plants (including the accumulation of heavy metals) and with parasitic plants ( summer herbs , striga , biochemistry of the parasite-host interaction and the resistance of some plants to the parasite). The summer herbs are parasites in sunflowers and tobacco, among other things, and subsequently he also dealt with the biochemistry of tobacco plants (tobacco aroma, analytical characterization of tobacco varieties, etc.).

Wegmann also dealt with the chaos researcher Otto E. Rössler with chaotic chemical reactions (such as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction) and with the resistance of plants to diseases.

He also dealt with the flora of Australia (especially neophytes ). He was on longer research stays in Canada, Egypt and Australia.

He was an honorary doctor of the Universities of Arad (where he was prorector and developed biochemistry) and Sibiu in Romania and honorary president of the University of Ecobiotechnology in Caracal in Romania.

Fonts

• with Meyers Lexicon Editor: Meyers Kleines Lexikon der Ökologie 1987
• with others: Schüler-Duden Ökologie, 1988, 2nd edition 2002

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kürschner Scholars Calendar 2009

Web links

• Obituary at the University of Tübingen