Uwe Meierhenrich

Uwe Meierhenrich (born October 23, 1967 in Detmold ) is a German physical chemist . Since 2005 he has taught as professor of analytical chemistry and physical chemistry at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in France.

Life

Meierhenrich comes from a family of teachers. After graduating from the Werreanger high school in Lage, Meierhenrich studied chemistry at the Philipps University of Marburg from 1988 to 1993 . He moved to the University of Bremen , where he received his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1997. Meierhenrich was a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau and at the French Synchrotron Center LURE , before he completed his habilitation in 2003 with the essay The Origin of Biomolecular Asymmetry at the University of Bremen. Since 2005 he has been a professor at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in France. In recognition of his work on chirality , he received the Horst Pracejus Prize of the GDCh in 2011 .

Act

Meierhenrich's name is linked to the detection of amino acids in space . In preparation for the ESA's Rosetta mission , the so-called interstellar ice was simulated under space conditions in the laboratory, in which 16 different amino acids were identified. Further experiments at the French synchrotron SOLEIL suggested that the homochirality of proteinogenic amino acids also originated under interstellar conditions.

Publications

• Munoz Caro, Meierhenrich et al .: Amino acids from ultraviolet irradiation of interstellar ice analogues , Nature 416, pp. 403-406, 2002. doi : 10.1038 / 416403a
• Meierhenrich et al .: Identification of diamino acids in the Murchison meteorite , PNAS, 101, pp. 9182-9186, 2004. doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0403043101
• Meierhenrich et al .: Asymmetric vacuum UV photolysis of the amino acid leucine in the solid state , Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 44, pp. 5630-5634, 2005. doi : 10.1002 / anie.200501311
• Meierhenrich: Amino acids and the asymmetry of life , Springer-Verlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-540-76885-2
• Meierhenrich: Comets and their origin , Wiley-VCH, 2014. ISBN 978-3-527-41281-5

Web links

• Homepage of Uwe Meierhenrich at the Faculté des Sciences of the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis ( Memento from February 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
• BBC News March 2002
• 3sat June 2004