Rudolf Schönheimer

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Rudolf Schönheimer

Rudolf Schönheimer , also Schoenheimer, (born May 10, 1898 in Berlin ; † September 11, 1941 in New York City ) was a German, then American biochemist who developed the technique of labeling molecules with stable isotopes , which was groundbreaking for the study of metabolic processes was.

Life

Schönheimer was the son of a doctor. After studying medicine at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin and graduating as Dr. med. In 1922 he became a pathologist at the hospital in Berlin-Moabit. There he became interested in the connection between lipid metabolism, cholesterol and arteriosclerosis and therefore continued his education in organic chemistry at the University of Leipzig from 1923 to 1926 . In 1926 he became an assistant and in 1928 a lecturer at the University of Freiburg (Institute for Pathological Anatomy), where he worked with Adolf Windaus . In 1933 he emigrated to the USA with his wife Salome Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer and worked at Columbia University in the radiochemistry department with Harold C. Urey . He became an associate professor there. There, together with researchers such as David Rittenberg (1906–1970) and Konrad Bloch, he developed labeling using stable isotopes in order to track food components on their way through the organism. In particular, he studied lipid metabolism (with the deuterium provided by Urey as a marker) and later the amino acid metabolism (with the nitrogen isotope N 15 also from Urey). Schönheimer and colleagues discovered that both types of metabolism took place at a surprisingly high rate. He was also able to show that if you initially only labeled tyrosine with N15, the heavy isotope of nitrogen would still appear in all other amino acids in the body. This underpins the theory of the urea cycle according to Hans Adolf Krebs and the transamination according to Alexander E. Braunstein , his investigations refuted the depot theory of the metabolism - on the contrary, there is a constant turnover in the metabolism.

Schönheimer discovered that cholesterol is a risk factor for arteriosclerosis . In his honor, the German Society for Arteriosclerosis Research (DGAF) awards the Rudolf Schönheimer Medal .

Schönheimer died of suicide at the age of 43 .

literature

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