Leon Paweł Marchlewski

Leon Paweł Marchlewski

Leon Paweł Teodor Marchlewski , also Leo Paul Theodor Marchlewski, (born December 15, 1869 in Włocławek , † January 16, 1946 in Kraków ) was a Polish chemist ( biochemistry , medicinal chemistry).

He was the son of a grain trader and studied from 1887 at the chemical laboratory of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw and from 1888 to 1890 at the Polytechnic in Zurich. He was Georg Lunge's assistant at the Institute for Technical Chemistry in Zurich and received his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1892 . Then he went to Edward Schunck's private laboratory near Manchester, where he dealt with plant dyes and began his study of chlorophyll . He found that it was not the same as that of the dye component in hemoglobin ( hematoporphyrin ), as suggested by Schunck , but that it had a similar structure (published in 1897) to that of porphyrins . He later continued his research on chlorophyll in Cracow , partly with Marceli Nencki in St. Petersburg. His research on chlorophyll and blood pigment showed the similarity of some chemical structures in plants and animals, suggesting a common origin. This was perceived as a great scientific discovery.

In 1897 he took over the laboratory management in a chemical factory in Clayton near Manchester (Claus & Rée) and went back to Poland in 1900, where he was in the national institute for food research (headed by Odo Bujwid ). In 1900 he received his habilitation in Cracow (The Chemistry of Chlorophyll). In 1903 he received the title of professor and became the youngest member of the Polish Academy of Sciences . In 1906 he became an associate professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and from 1906 to 1939 he was director of the Institute of Medicinal Chemistry, a name for biochemistry at the time. At the Jagiellonian University he was temporarily dean of the medical faculty (1913/14) and rector (1926 and 1928). From 1917 to 1921 he set up two institutes for agricultural research: the one in Puławy in 1917 and the one in Bydgoszcz from 1918, when Poland became independent . In 1932 he withdrew from research due to illness (heart failure). From 1930 to 1935 he was a senator of the Polish Republic.

He founded a school of laboratory medicine and biochemistry in Cracow and published several textbooks and manuals, including the first Polish manuals for modern laboratory medicine. In 1930 he received an honorary doctorate from the Jagiellonian University. In 1913 and 1914 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. He was an honorary member of the Scientific Societies of Cracow and Lviv, the Societé Cimique de France, was a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences, the Czech Agricultural Academy and the Romanian Chemical Society. He received the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Danish Danebrog Order .

He is the brother of the social democratic politician Julian Balthasar Marchlewski . He was married twice, from 1898 to the Englishwoman Fanny Hargreaves, with whom he had three sons and who died in 1932, and from 1936 to Irena Barbagowa. It rests in the Rakowicki Cemetery in Krakow.

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989
• Janusz Ostrowski, Marek Muszytowski, Boleslaw Rutkowski: Leon Marchlewski: one of the precursors of clinical chemistry, Journal of nephrology, Volume 24, Suppl 17, 2011, pp. 58-61 Abstract
• W. Ostrowski: Leon P. Marchlewski (1869-1946). Acta Physiol. Pol., Vol. 38, 1987, No. 2, pp. 109-113

Fonts

• With Schunck: Contributions to the Chemistry of Chlorophyl: VII: Phylloporphyrin and Haematoporphyrin: A Comparison, Proceedings of the Royal Society 1896
• Teorie i metody badania współczesnej chemii organicznej, Lemberg 1905
• Chemia organiczna (Organic Chemistry), Cracow 1910
• Podrcznik do badań fizjologiczno-chemicznych, Cracow 1916
• Chemia fizjologiczna, Krakow 1947