Franz Hofmeister

Franz Hofmeister ( born August 30, 1850 in Prague, † July 26, 1922 in Würzburg) was a Bohemian biochemist.

Life and work

Franz Hofmeister studied medicine at the University of Prague at Hugo Huppert and his habilitation in 1879 on the physiological aspects of digestion processes. He received in 1885 a professorship in Prague and moved in 1896 to the University of Strasbourg. His successor in Prague was Julius Pohl.

Hofmeister's main focus was the protein chemistry. He struck the first to propose a structure of proteins from amino acids with peptide bonds.

Named after him is the Hofmeister series, indicating the effect of ions on the water solubility of proteins. This number is not important for the purification of peptides today.