Eduard Buchner

75 languages

Tools

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the American scholar in education studies, see

Eduard Buchner

Buchner in 1907

Born

20 May 1860

Died

13 August 1917

(aged 57)

Alma mater

Known for

Awards

(1905)

(1907)

Scientific career

Fields

Institutions

Eduard Buchner

(

German:

; 20 May 1860 – 13 August 1917)

was a German

and expert on fermentation (sometimes called a

), awarded the 1907

for his work on

Biography

[

]

Early years

[

]

Buchner was born in

to a physician and Doctor Extraordinary of Forensic

Medicine. His older brother was the bacteriologist

In 1884, he began studies of chemistry with

and

of botany with

, at the Botanic Institute in Munich. After a period

working with Otto Fischer (cousin of

) at the

, Buchner was awarded a doctorate from the

in 1888 under

Academics

[

]

Buchner was appointed assistant lecturer in the organic laboratory of

in 1889 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1891, he

was promoted to lecturer at the same university.

In the autumn of 1893, Buchner moved to

and appointed

professor in 1895. In the next year, he was appointed Professor Extraordinary

for Analytical and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the chemical laboratory of H.

von Pechmann at the

In October 1898, he was appointed to the Chair of General Chemistry in the

, fully training his assistants by himself,

and received his habilitation in 1900.

In 1909, he was transferred to the

(reorganised to be

in 1945

), and in

1911, he moved to

The Nobel Prize

[

]

Buchner received the

in 1907.

The experiment for which Buchner won the Nobel Prize

consisted of producing a

extract of

cells and showing that this "press juice" could ferment sugar.

This dealt yet another blow to

by showing that the presence of living yeast cells was not needed for

fermentation. The cell-free extract was produced by combining dry yeast cells,

and

and then

pulverizing the yeast cells with a pestle and mortar. This mixture would then become moist as the yeast cells'

contents would come out of the cells. Once this step was done, the moist mixture would be put through a press and the

resulting "press juice" had

, or

added and

was seen to evolve, sometimes for

days. Microscopic investigation revealed no living yeast cells in the extract. Buchner hypothesized that yeast cells

secrete proteins into their environment in order to ferment sugars, but it was later found that fermentation occurs

inside the yeast cells.

claimed to have discovered free-cell fermentation a generation earlier than

Buchner,

but Buchner and Rapp considered that she was subjectively convinced of the existence of an enzyme of

fermentation, and that her experimental evidence was unconvincing.

Personal life

[

]

Buchner married Lotte Stahl in 1900. At the outbreak of the

, he volunteered in the

and rose to the rank of

, commanding a munition-transport unit on the

and then

. In

March 1916, he returned the University of Würzburg. In April 1917, he volunteered again. On 11 August 1917, while

stationed at

, he was hit by a shell fragment in the left thigh and died in a field hospital two days

later.

He died in the

and is buried in the cemetery of German soldiers in Focșani.

Though it is believed by some that the

and the

are named for him, they are actually named

for the industrial chemist

Publications

[

]

Eduard Buchner (1897).

Berichte der Deutschen

Chemischen Gesellschaft

117–

124.

Eduard Buchner, Rudolf Rapp (1899).

Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen

Gesellschaft

(2):

2086–

2094.

Robert Kohler (1971). "The background to Eduard Buchner's discovery of cell-free fermentation".

Journal of the

History of Biology

(1):

35–

61.

Robert Kohler (1972). "The reception of Eduard Buchner's discovery of cell-free fermentation".

Journal of the

History of Biology

(2):

327–

353.