Konrad Bloch

Konrad Bloch, 1965

Memorial plaque in Neisse

Konrad Emil Bloch (born January 21, 1912 in Neisse / Upper Silesia , † October 15, 2000 in Lexington , Massachusetts ) was a German-American biochemist and Nobel Prize winner .

Life

Konrad Bloch, son of Jewish parents Fritz Bloch and Henna (née Striemer), began studying chemistry in 1930 at the Technical University of Munich , where he soon turned to organic chemistry . After graduating, he had to leave Germany because of Nazi persecution in 1934 and found work at the Swiss Research Institute in Davos . In 1936 he immigrated to the USA. At Columbia University he received his doctorate under Hans T. Clarke at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1938 and was there until 1946 as a research professor. He then received a professorship in biochemistry at the University of Chicago. From 1954 to 1982 he was the first holder of a chair in biochemistry at Harvard University in Cambridge . In 1955 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1956 to the National Academy of Sciences and 1966 to the American Philosophical Society . Since 1976 he has been a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In 1964 he received along with Feodor Lynen from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in equal shares, then the equivalent of about 220,000 German marks doped Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine . In his work on the regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism, Bloch was able to identify the process in which fatty acids are converted into cholesterol in the human body . The research of the two scientists, who carried out their research independently of one another, laid a noteworthy basis for therapies against circulatory diseases and for cholesterol-lowering drugs.

literature

• Frank H. Westheimer and W. Lipscomb: Konrad Bloch. January 21, 1912 - October 5, 2000. In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Volume 48, 2002, pp. 43–49 ( PDF, 286 kB )
• Ute Deichmann : Bloch Konrad. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , pp. 187 f.

Web links

Commons : Konrad Bloch  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Konrad Bloch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1964 award ceremony for Konrad Bloch (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ute Deichmann: Bloch Konrad. In: Werner E. Gerabek et al. (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. Berlin / New York 2005, pp. 187 f .; here: p. 187.