Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus

Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus ( born December 25, 1876 in Berlin, † June 9, 1959 in Göttingen ) was a German chemist and biochemist. In 1928 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Life and achievements

After leaving school at the French Gymnasium in Berlin, he initially studied from 1895 medicine in Freiburg and Berlin, turned, however, after the Physikum of chemistry and in 1899 received his doctorate at Heinrich Kiliani in Freiburg with his dissertation on " New contributions to the knowledge of the Digitalisstoffe ". Then he went back to Berlin as an employee of Emil Fischer. In 1901 he moved again to Freiburg, where he habilitated in 1904.

He was a lecturer and associate professor in Freiburg until 1913, then professor in Innsbruck until 1915. Afterwards he went as a successor of Otto Wallach to Göttingen, where he held the chair of chemistry until his retirement.

Already submitted his habilitation thesis in Freiburg in 1903 was titled " About Cholesterol ". To his further research activity was focused on the chemistry of steroids.

It succeeded Windaus to demonstrate the close relationship between the cholesterol and bile acids. He also explained to the chemical structure of various vitamins of the B complex and the D group and confirmed his results by their synthesis. The method according to his (1927 ) photo chemically synthesized vitamin D was marketed under the brand name Vigantol of the pharmaceutical company E. Merck ( Darmstadt, Germany) and Bayer ( Leverkusen).

His grave is located at the city cemetery Göttingen, on the outside of him more Nobel laureates are still buried.

Honors

Windaus received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Chemistry " for his contributions to the study of the structure of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins ." The proposed in his Nobel lecture structural formula of cholesterol, however, was of Windaus itself due to the research of John Desmond Bernal revised 1932 (1901-1971, University of Cambridge / UK). 1941 was awarded to him by Adolf Hitler, the Goethe Medal for Art and Science.

Windaus was a member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and of the Order Pour le Merite for Arts and Sciences. As further honors he received, inter alia, Adolf von Baeyer Medal, the Louis Pasteur Medal as well as numerous honorary doctorate. From 1922 he was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and in 1927 a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

From the hand of German President Theodor Heuss in 1951 he received the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the speech on his 65th birthday Wilhelm Biltz: