Uwe Meierhenrich (born 23 October 1967 in

Detmold Detmold () is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with a population of . It was the capital of the small Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918 and then of the Free State of Lippe until 1947. Today it is the administrative center of t ...

) is a German Physico-Chemist. He is professor of Analytical and

Physical Chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistica ...

at the

University of Nice Sophia Antipolis The University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (french: Université Nice Sophia Antipolis) was a university located in Nice, France and neighboring areas. It was founded in 1965 and was organized in eight faculties, two autonomous institutes and an eng ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Academic life

Meierhenrich was raised in a family of teachers and professors. He studied

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

at the Philipps-University Marburg and obtained a Ph.D. degree in

physical chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistica ...

at the

University of Bremen The University of Bremen (German: ''Universität Bremen'') is a public university in Bremen, Germany, with approximately 23,500 people from 115 countries. It is one of 11 institutions which were successful in the category "Institutional Strategi ...

by Thiemann. He did postdoctoral work at the

Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (abbreviation: MPS; german: Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung) is a research institute in astronomy and astrophysics located in Göttingen, Germany, where it relocated in February 201 ...

in Katlenburg-Lindau and at the French

Synchrotron A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed ...

Center LURE. In 2003 he earned his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...

with the publication of ''The Origin of Biomolecular Asymmetry'' at the

. In 2005 he was hired as a professor at the

. For his work on

chirality Chirality is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object. An object or a system is ''chiral'' if it is distinguishable from ...

, he was awarded the Horst-Pracejus-Prize of the

Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker The German Chemical Society (German: ', GDCh) is a learned society and professional association founded in 1949 to represent the interests of German chemists in local, national and international contexts. GDCh "brings together people working in che ...

(German Chemical Society) in 2011.

Career

Meierhenrich was hired by the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

to develop instrumentation for its Rosetta mission to

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (abbreviated as 67P or 67P/C–G) is a Jupiter-family comet, originally from the Kuiper belt, with a current orbital period of 6.45 years, a rotation period of approximately 12.4 hours and a maximum velocity of . Chu ...

. The purpose of the instrumentation was to detect organic compounds on the comet's surface. To test it on Earth, he worked with scientists at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city o ...

in the Netherlands who were making artificial cometary ice. They replicated the conditions in space, creating a cold vacuum and bombarding the ice with

ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation ...

light. They succeeded in synthesizing 16

amino acids Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha am ...

. When the Rosetta spacecraft reached 67P in 2014, it detected similar organic compounds in the comet. In further experiments at his lab in Nice, he analyzed cometary ice analogs with multidimensional gas chromatography and detected

ribose Ribose is a simple sugar and carbohydrate with molecular formula C5H10O5 and the linear-form composition H−(C=O)−(CHOH)4−H. The naturally-occurring form, , is a component of the ribonucleotides from which RNA is built, and so this com ...

, one of the sugars that make up DNA. Further experiments at the French SOLEIL synchrotron showed that

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

homochirality Homochirality is a uniformity of chirality, or handedness. Objects are chiral when they cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, the left and right hands of a human are approximately mirror images of each other but are not their ow ...

can also originate under interstellar conditions.

Publications

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References

External links

Homepage
at the Faculty of Sciences at the

CNRS press release 2002
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meierhenrich, Uwe German physical chemists Living people 1967 births People from Detmold