Alwin Max Pappenheimer, Jr.

Alwin Max Pappenheimer Junior ( born November 25, 1908 in Cedarhurst (New York), † March 21, 1995 in Cambridge (Massachusetts ) ) was an American chemist, immunologist and bacteriologist, known for research on bacterial toxins, in particular diphtheria toxin, the study of which he devoted his scientific career.

He was the son of a prominent pathologist same at the medical faculty of Columbia University name, his brother was the physiologist John Pappenheimer. Pappenheimer studied from 1925 at Harvard University, where he was one of the first students at the newly established biochemistry degree program and in 1932 received his doctorate in organic chemistry. He distinguished himself as a rower against Yale. As a post - graduate student he was two years in the laboratory of Henry Dale of the National Institute of Medical Research in London. As a scientist at the Massachusetts State Antitoxin and Vaccine Laboratory in Jamaica Plains, where he was in 1935, he succeeded in the isolation and presentation of diphtheria toxin in crystalline form. From 1938 he was assistant professor of bacteriology at the University of Pennsylvania and from 1941 at the invitation of Colin MacLeod at New York University, where they both built a Department of Microbiology. During World War II, he conducted research as Captain in the Medical Corps in military research laboratories in the South Pacific in bacteriology. In 1945 he continued his work as a professor in the Department of Immunology and Bacteriology, New York University. In 1956, he was Head of the Department there Microbiology. From 1958 he was professor of biology at Harvard ( and Chairman of the Board of Tutors in Biochemical Sciences), where he studied until his retirement in 1979 also. He conducted research in the 1950s on the diphtheria toxin and the mechanism by which it damages cells. Among other things, he found with employees, it inhibits protein synthesis. His employees also his student and later colleague R. John Collier counted.

In 1941 he received the Eli Lilly and Company Research Award. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as 1954/1955 President of the American Association of Immunologists. In 1990 he was awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize with John Collier.

He was married to Pauline Forbes since 1938. The couple had two daughters and a son.