Leonidas Zervas

Leonidas Zervas (born May 21, 1902 in Megalopolis , † July 10, 1980 in Athens ) was a Greek chemist ( organic chemistry ).

Life

Zervas studied from 1918 at the University of Athens and from 1921 at the University of Berlin. There he received his doctorate in 1929 (on the aldehyde compounds of amino acids). From 1929 to 1934 he carried out research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research in Dresden, where his dissertation had been written under Max Bergmann , and from 1934 to 1937 at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City , where he emigrated from the National Socialists forced miner followed. Then he was Professor of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Thessaloniki and from 1939 Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Athens. Due to the occupation and the civil war, he could not really start his research until 1950. At times he was also removed from office under the military junta. In 1968 he retired.

He dealt with peptide chemistry and its synthesis. A method by Zervas to protect reactive groups in amino acids with the benzyloxycarbonyl group , named after Zervas Z group, became important in the peptide synthesis of the Bergmann group. This enabled the limits of the approach of the pioneer of peptide synthesis Emil Fischer (developed between 1901 and 1909) to be overcome. In the early 1930s, works by the Bergmann group on the synthesis of peptides with reactive side groups that could not be synthesized until then appeared in rapid succession.

Zerva's research led, among other things, to a method for the industrial synthesis of insulin , which consists of two cysteine- containing chains held together by disulfide bridges . Zervas undertook a systematic study of the synthesis of asymmetric cysteine-containing peptides. He introduced new protecting groups that enabled the disulfide bridges to be made.

In 1956 he became a member of the Academy of Athens and was its president from 1969 to 1970. In 1976 he became a foreign member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. 1964/65 he was chairman of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission. From 1974 to 1979 he was President of the Greek National Research Organization.

In 1930 he married Hildegard Lange.

Fonts

• with Max Bergmann: About a general method of peptide synthesis , reports of the German Chemical Society, Volume 65, 1932, pp. 1192-1201, doi : 10.1002 / cber.19320650722 .

literature

• Joseph S. Fruton , Article Zervas in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• PG Kastsoyannis, biography and list of publications by Zervas in: The Chemistry of Polypeptides, New York, 1972, pp. 1-20.