Bruno H. Zimm
Bruno Hasbrouck Zimm ( born October 31, 1920 in Kingston ( New York), † 26 November, 2005 La Jolla ) was an American chemist who dealt with physical chemistry of polymers and proteins and DNA.
Life
Zimm studied at Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in 1941, her Master's degree in 1943 and his doctorate in 1944 with Joseph E. Mayer. After that, he was instructor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in Hermann F. Mark and from 1946 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with light scattering and the Zimm plot introduced. At Berkeley, he was Assistant Professor and Associate Professor from 1950 to 1952. 1951-1960 he was. At the research laboratories of General Electric in Schenectady From 1960, he had a full professorship at the University of California, San Diego. In 1991 he retired.
1950/51 he was a visiting professor at Harvard University and in 1960 at Yale University. Most recently, he was scientific adviser to the Wyatt Technology Corporation.
Work
Zimm worked both experimentally and theoretically. From his education at Mayer ago he had a focus in statistical mechanics. During his time with Mark Herman at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, he developed the Zimm plot, which makes it possible to light scattering at the same molecular weight and shape ( via the second virial coefficient and the radius of gyration ) to determine of polymers. In its release in 1948, he also gave the same to the design principles (including electronic schematics ) of a new photometer. His interest in light scattering was developed during the Second World War, when he worked at an organization with the military issues project on light scattering of smoke, where he used the Einstein - Smoluchowski theory. Once they heard that Peter Debye in a still unpublished work molecular weights of polymers with specific light scattering, turned Zimm and his colleague Paul Doty ( also a PhD student of Mayer) on polymers of this ..
The Zimm model (see Rouse model) for the dynamics of the polymer was introduced from it 1956. The Zimm- Bragg model was published by Zimm and JK Bragg in 1959 and describes in statistical mechanics the transition of a protein into a helical structure. It corresponds to a one-dimensional Ising model. In 1960, he developed a theory of melting of DNA helices.
From about 1960 he worked on physical chemistry of DNA. To measure the length of DNA molecules he developed in the 1960s, a viscometer with a rotating cylinders. So that it could determine the correct length values first in the DNA of the phage, E. coli, and then by finally chromosomes of Drosophila. He also studied the diffusion of DNA in gel electrophoresis and interaction of DNA with the ion background in solution.
Honors and Memberships
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.