Victor Henri

Victor Henri ( born June 6 1872 in Marseille, † June 21, 1940 in La Rochelle ) was a German - French physical chemist and psychologist Russian descent. He was best known as a pioneer in enzyme kinetics.

He was extremely productive - he has published over 500 scientific articles in various disciplines such as physical chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, and psychology, among others, also in German.

Henri doctorate twice: in 1897 at the University of Göttingen in the field of psychology and in 1903 in Paris on enzyme kinetics, in 1907 he received permission to teach. In 1920 he was at the University of Zurich for ao Appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry. He served there pioneering work in the field of spectroscopy. In 1930 he became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Liege ( Belgium). His successor at the University of Zurich was Hans von Halban.

In 1902 he published an article in which he first stated the basic equation of enzyme kinetics and also derived. This equation he wrote as follows

Herein, A denotes the initial concentration of the substrate and x is the concentration of the product formed. The other symbols represent constants. In today's notation could write the equation as:

Where V is the reaction rate, S is the substrate concentration, the concentration of product P, and K1 and K2 denote the dissociation constant of the enzyme- substrate complex or enzyme - product complex.

It took about ten years to the biochemists realized the full significance of this equation around the world. For although Henri's article and his doctoral thesis on this topic (1903, see above ) have been widely quoted, have only Leonor Michaelis and Maud Menten derived with a seminal article in 1913, the equation more accurately and interpreted, thus enabling a variety of applications. In particular, they have interpreted the constants in the equation correctly and comprehensively. Usually, the equation for the special case P = 0 is used, and usually bears the name of Michaelis -Menten kinetics, but sometimes Henri- Michaelis -Menten kinetics.

It was suggested that the above-mentioned Equation (* ), which is> 0 P relevant for the general case, to name Henri kinetics.

A comprehensive biographical article about Henri wrote S. Nicolas.

Credentials

• Vita Victor Henri

• Psychologist
• Physical chemist
• Russian
• Frenchman
• Born in 1872
• Died in 1940
• Man