Walther F. Goebel

Walther Goebel is a redirect to this article. For the actor with the birth name Walter Goebel see Fred Goebel .

Walther Frederick Goebel (born December 24, 1899 in Palo Alto , California , † November 1, 1993 in Essex , Connecticut ) was an American immunologist and chemist .

Goebel's father Julius Goebel taught German at Stanford University (during this time the family also experienced the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that destroyed their home) and later at the University of Illinois . He studied chemistry at the University of Illinois with a master’s degree in 1921 and a doctorate under William A. Noyes in 1923. As a post-doctoral student, he was with Richard Willstätter in Munich in 1923/24 . During this time he also experienced the Hitler putsch , with his hat shot off his head. He was from 1924 at the Rockefeller Institute, later Rockefeller University , where he stayed for the rest of his career. From 1934 he was an associate member and from 1944 a full member. After converting to a university, he became a professor in 1957. In 1970 he retired, but continued to work at the Walker Laboratory at the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in Rye .

With Oswald T. Avery and Michael Heidelberger , he studied the type-specific chemical components of pneumococci when they joined the Rockefeller Institute and they found that their antigens consist of polysaccharides , the first indication of such antigens in bacteria. Goebel studied these antigens for the next 20 years. During and after World War II, he turned to the study of diarrhea-causing bacteria.

He received honorary doctorates from Rockefeller University (1978) and Middlebury College (1959) and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1958 . In 1973 he was one of the first to receive the Avery Landsteiner Prize .

Goebel was married twice and had two daughters from his first marriage (to Cornelia van Rensselaer Robb, marriage in 1940).

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times 1993
• Biography at the National Academy of Sciences by Maclyn McCarty