Norbert Hilschmann

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Norbert Hilschmann (born February 8, 1931 in Nuremberg , † December 3, 2012 in Göttingen ) was a German immunologist and biochemist who pioneered the elucidation of the structure of antibodies .

Career

Hilschmann received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Munich in 1957 . In 1971 he was appointed "Scientific Member" of the Max Planck Society and Director of the Immunochemistry Department of the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen. He was professor for physiological chemistry in Göttingen.

He succeeded in the mid-1960s at Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Lyman C. Craig and in collaboration with him, the first complete sequencing of the light chains of an antibody molecule (parts of Bence Jones proteins ) and the discovery of the structure of variable and constant regions . He used sequencing methods developed by his teacher Gerhard Braunitzer and published the result with Craig in 1965. A little later, Gerald M. Edelman succeeded independently in the complete sequencing of an antibody and the detection of its structure from 4 chains (2 light, 2 heavy), for which purpose he received the Nobel Prize in 1972 (with Rodney R. Porter ). There has been speculation that Hilschmann was passed over because he committed a faux pas when presenting his results in the United States at a conference in Warner Springs by, for reasons of priority (he was only a relatively unknown post-doctoral student at the time), his slides with the Showed sequence data so quickly that the scientists present could not make a record.

Hilschmann and his group were also the first to clarify the sequence of an MHC -II complex in the 1980s .

Later he dealt with the genetically controlled self-organization and interconnection of the brain via (in their structure with variable and constant regions antibody-like) cell adhesion molecules ( protocadherins ).

Hilschmann also dealt with Adolf Butenandt (his teacher) and his role in the Third Reich.

He was married and had three children.

Honors

In 1974 he received the Robert Koch Prize for pioneering research into the chemical structure and evolution of human antibodies . In 1975 he received the Carus Prize , in the same year he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Academic Academy . In 1971 he was a laureate of the Feldberg Foundation .

In 1984 he became a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

  • Immunity - a preprogrammed response to the unexpected . Mannheim Forum 82/83
  • The Antibody Problem, a Model for Understanding Cell Differentiation at the Molecular Level . Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag 1977 (lectures Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
  • The antibody - an intelligent molecule . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1988 (series of lectures by the Lower Saxony state government to promote scientific research)
  • The immune and nervous systems: preprogrammed systems to react to the unexpected , Nachrichten Akademie Wiss. Göttingen, 2000

Web links / literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographical data from Norbert Hilschmann in: Göttinger Tageblatt
  2. ^ Obituary notice in the Süddeutsche Zeitung
  3. ↑ Hilschmann, Craig, Amino acid sequence studies with Bence-Jones proteins , Proc. Nat. Acad., Volume 53, pp. 1403-1409, Hilschmann Hoppe-Seylers Z. f. Physiolog. Chemie, Volume 348, 1967, pp. 1718-1722, Hilschmann The molecular basis of antibody formation , Natural Sciences, Volume 56, 1969, pp. 195-205
  4. ↑ Melvin Cohn's Antibody Workshop , February 1965 in Warner Springs, California.
  5. ↑ Klaus Eichmann Köhler's Invention , Birkhäuser 2005, p. 40 f. Another reason given there is the limitation of the Nobel Prize winners to a maximum of three, which created problems with the inclusion of Craig, Hilschmann's return from New York to Germany soon after his discovery and that he published in internationally less popular journals. On the Warner Springs Conference see also Alfred Tauber, Scott Podolsky Clonal Selection Theory , Harvard University Press 1997, p. 77.
  6. ↑ Friedrich Peter Thinnes, Gundolf Egert, Hilde Götz, Edlef Pauly, Peter Altevogt, Sevil Kölbel, Peter Wernet, Hartmut Kratzin, Chao-yuh Yang, Hilschmann Primary Structure of class II human histocompatibility antigens (primary structure of human histocompatibility antigens of class II) , Part 1, Hoppe-Seylers Z. Physiolog. Chemie, Volume 362, 1981, pp. 1665-1669, Part 2, Volume 362, 1983, pp. 671-676 (with Kruse), Part 3, Volume 364, 1983, pp. 749-755, Hilschmann et al. a. Primary structure of class II human histocompatibility antigens (HLA-D) , Part 1, Hoppe Seylers Z. Physiolog. Chemie, Volume 365, 1984, pp. 1277-1289, Part 2, pp. 1291-1308
  7. ↑ Hilschmann, H. Barnikol, S. Barnikol-Watanabe, H. Götz, H. Kratzin, E. Thinnes The immunoglobulin-like genetic predetermination of the brain: the protocadherins, blueprint of the neuronal network , Naturwissenschaften, Volume 88, 2001, Pp. 2-12
personal data
SURNAME Hilschmann, Norbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biochemist and immunologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH 3rd December 2012
Place of death Goettingen