Oskar Wintersteiner

Oskar Paul Wintersteiner (born November 15, 1898 in Bruck an der Mur , † August 15, 1971 in Graz ) was an Austrian-American chemist and biologist. Today he is best known for proving in 1928 that insulin is a protein .

life and work

Wintersteiner received a professorship in microchemistry for his work with Fritz Pregl at the University of Graz . He taught there until 1926 before moving to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore . There, together with his laboratory colleague Vincent du Vigneaud , he succeeded in proving that the human hormone insulin only consists of two amino acid chains.

Wintersteiner then worked for the Rockefeller Institute in New York and was appointed assistant professor of chemistry at Columbia University in 1929 . In 1941 he moved to the Squibb Institute for Medical Research , where he worked on several arms production projects during the Second World War. There he also purified penicillin with the help of microanalysis and was the first to show that it contains sulfur .

Wintersteiner received numerous awards for his work and was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1950 .

Fonts (selection)

• Oskar Wintersteiner, Hans Jensen: Presentation and properties of crystallized insulin. In: Emil Abderhalden (Hrsg.): Handbook of biological working methods. Dept. V: Methods for studying the function of the individual organs of the animal organism. Part 3, B: organs of incretion, hormones, vitamins, auxins. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin 1938, 2nd half, pp. 901–928.

literature

• Robert D. Simoni, Robert L. Hill and Martha Vaughan: Purification of Progestin (s): Oskar Wintersteiner. In: The journal of biological chemistry. Vol. 107, 1934, pp. 321-336.
• The New York Times Biographical Service. Volume 2 (1971), p. 2919.