Michael Rossmann

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Michael George Rossmann (born July 30, 1930 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 14, 2019 in West Lafayette , Indiana ) was a German- American biologist and professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Using crystallographic methods, he gained fundamental knowledge about the super- secondary structure of proteins ( Rossmann fold ) and the structure of viruses .

Life

Rossmann's official curriculum vitae (see web links) does not contain any information for the time between his birth in Frankfurt in 1930 and his first academic degree in London in 1950 . However, the Nelly Rossmann Family Papers in the holdings of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reveal more about his family background and the time before his studies .

Nelly Rossmann, his mother, was born on February 14, 1899 in Frankfurt as the daughter of the wealthy coin dealer Heinrich Schwabacher and his wife Anna, née Cahn. Her brother was the numismatist Willy Schwabacher . On January 30, 1930, Nelly married Alexander Rossmann, who came from a non-Jewish family in Wiesbaden . This marriage was divorced in 1933, apparently due to strong National Socialist and anti-Semitic hostility from the circle of the Rossmann family. After the divorce, Nelly and her son Michael lived with their maternal grandparents. Nelly worked as a graphic designer for the Frankfurter Zeitung . She was fired there in 1935 because Jews were no longer allowed to work in the newspaper industry. During this time she also joined the Quakers .

After she was kicked out of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Nelly Rossmann started teaching Jewish children. In December 1938 she decided to send her son to the Quaker School in Eerde . Her parents, who had relatives in London, emigrated there in early 1939 while she was still in Frankfurt. During the summer vacation of 1939 Michael first returned to Frankfurt before he and his mother visited their grandparents in London. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented his return to Eerde, so that mother and son also stayed in London permanently. Nelly worked as a graphic designer for the German-language London newspaper Die Zeitung , and Michael received a scholarship to attend a Quaker boarding school in Essex . The mother and son became British citizens in 1945, and Michael began studying after the war.

Rossmann took two bachelor's exams at the University of London in 1950 and 1951 and received a master's degree in physics there in 1953 . A Ph.D. he acquired in 1956 at the University of Glasgow with a thesis on chemical crystallography . He worked as a postdoctoral fellow - funded by the Fulbright Program - at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and then as a research assistant at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology , Cambridge . Since 1964 he has held professorships at Purdue University in West Lafayette , Indiana : from 1964 as associate professor (junior professor) and from 1967 as full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, from 1975 in the Department of Biochemistry , and again from 1978 in the Department of Biological Sciences. He had additional teaching positions since 1989 at Cornell University in Ithaca , New York and since 1995 for biochemistry at the Indiana University School of Medicine ( Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis ) in Indianapolis .

Michael Rossmann died in West Lafayette, Indiana in May 2019 at the age of 88.

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renowned Purdue University scientist Michael Rossmann dies , purdue.edu, May 14, 2019, accessed May 15, 2019
  2. ^ Nelly Rossmann Family Papers : All of the following information comes from there.
  3. ↑ Petra Bonavita: Quakers as saviors in Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014, ISBN 3-89657-149-4 , p. 45
  4. ↑ See also: Petra Bonavita: Quäker als Retter im Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014, ISBN 3-89657-149-4 , pp. 42–43
  5. ^ Michael G. Rossmann at the Gairdner Foundation (gairdner.org); Retrieved December 8, 2012
  6. ^ Past Recipients of the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize at columbia.edu; Retrieved December 18, 2010
  7. ^ Michael G Rossmann at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (kva.se); Retrieved July 30, 2011
  8. ^ Goethe University - laureate since 1952. In: uni-frankfurt.de. March 14, 2016, accessed January 23, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Rossmann, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rossmann, Michael G .; Rossmann, Michael George (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American biologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 2019
Place of death West Lafayette , Indiana