Hans Neurath (October 29, 1909 – April 2002) was a biochemist, a leader in

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

chemistry, and the founding chairman of the Department of

Biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. He was born in

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and received his doctorate in 1933 from the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

. He then studied in London and at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. In 1938, he was appointed professor at Duke University, where he established a research program on the physical chemistry of proteins. Neurath was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Max Planck Society of Germany.

Scientific research

Neurath had wide-ranging interests in the physical chemistry of proteins. He published seminal papers on protein structure and denaturation and debunked early models of protein structures, notably those of

William Astbury William Thomas Astbury FRS (25 February 1898 – 4 June 1961) was an English physicist and molecular biologist who made pioneering X-ray diffraction studies of biological molecules. His work on keratin provided the foundation for Linus Pauling ...

. His research focused mainly on the

protease A protease (also called a peptidase, proteinase, or proteolytic enzyme) is an enzyme that catalyzes (increases reaction rate or "speeds up") proteolysis, breaking down proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids, and spurring the ...

s, (proteins that act as

enzyme Enzymes () are proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecules known as products ...

s cleaving other proteins).

Writing and editing

Neurath wrote more than 400 papers. He founded two journals of protein science: ''Biochemistry'', which he edited from 1961 to 1991; and ''Protein Science,'' which he edited from 1991 to 1998. He also edited three volumes of "The Proteins," a reference work.

Work in Seattle

Neurath founded the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, and served as its chair from 1950 until 1975, when he retired. His department produced three winners of the

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...

Edwin G. Krebs Edwin Gerhard Krebs (June 6, 1918 – December 21, 2009) was an American biochemist. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in 1989 together with Alfred Gilman and ...

and

Edmond H. Fischer Edmond Henri Fischer (April 6, 1920 – August 27, 2021) was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works ...

, who stayed in Seattle; and

Martin Rodbell Martin Rodbell (December 1, 1925 – December 7, 1998) was an American biochemist and molecular endocrinologist who is best known for his discovery of G-proteins. He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alfred G. Gilman fo ...

, who earned his PhD in the department and went on to a distinguished career at the

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

. Neurath was also part-time scientific director of the

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, formerly known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and also known as Fred Hutch or The Hutch, is a cancer research institute established in 1975 in Seattle, Washington. History The center grew out o ...

in Seattle.

Personal life

Neurath was married to Susi Spitzer Neurath for 41 years. He had a son, Peter F. Neurath, from an earlier marriage; two stepchildren, Margaret Albrecht and Frank Meyer; and three step-grandchildren. He died at the age of 92 on April 12, 2002 in Seattle.

Heritage

The

Protein Society The Protein Society is an international, not-for-profit, scholarly society with the mission to provide forums for the advancement of research into protein structure, function, design and applications. History It was founded in 1986, with the lea ...

presents its annual Hans Neurath Award in recognition of "a recent contribution of unusual merit to basic protein science."

References

External links

Neurath webpage at UW Seattle

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neurath, Hans American biochemists Austrian molecular biologists American molecular biologists Duke University faculty University of Minnesota alumni 1909 births 2002 deaths Members of the National Academy of Medicine