Albrecht Kossel

Albrecht Kossel ( born September 16, 1853 in Rostock, † July 5, 1927 in Heidelberg) was a German physician and physiologist. He was awarded the 1910 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Family

Albrecht Kossel was born as the eldest son of the Prussian consul Albrecht Kossel senior and his wife Klara in Rostock. Albrecht Kossel was married to Louise, born Holtzmann, ( daughter of philologist Adolf Holtzmann ). The marriage produced a daughter and a son, the physicist Walther Kossel, who discovered the specific interference phenomenon of X-rays by crystals.

Career

1872 Albrecht Kossel began to study medicine at the newly founded University of Strasbourg, where influenced him, especially the lectures of his professors Heinrich Anton de Bary, Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer, August Kundt, Adolf von Baeyer and especially Felix Hoppe- Seyler. Kossel in 1878 received his doctorate at the University of Rostock for Dr. med.

Kossel got an assistant to his former teacher, Hoppe- Seyler. 1883 called him Emil Du Bois- Reymond on the position of director of the Berlin Institute of Physiology. Here he was also appointed associate professor at the Medical Faculty.

1895 was followed by Kossel a full professorship at the Department of Physiology at the University of Marburg. Kossel was director of the Physiological Institute. In 1901 he accepted a professorship at the University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, as the successor of Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne and Hermann von Helmholtz.

Scientific field work

Albrecht Kossels research area was the area physiological chemistry, especially the chemistry of tissues and cells. He began his research with a focus on the nucleus and then turned more and more to the proteins, and the changes of proteins in the conversion to peptides. At fries he studied the protamine and hexon bases. He found out that it is a polymer with the discovered by Friedrich Miescher nucleic acid. 1886 Kossel discovered the histidine. He then developed a quantitative method for the isolation of hexon bases. With his pupil Henry Drysdale Dakin Kossel investigated arginase, an enzyme that breaks down arginine into urea and ornithine. Kossel discovered on the agmatine in herring sperm and developed a method to isolate it.

Last years

Albrecht Kossel lived even after his retirement with his family in Heidelberg. Here he was laid to rest at the Heidelberg Mountain Cemetery, next to his wife Luise, born Holtzmann.

The tomb is made ​​of black, polished granite, and designed in the form of a Breitädikula. The low cornerstone carry a strong, flat - triangular final roof beams and frames in strict outline the inscription wall.

In this family grave was also his son, who died in 1956, the physicist Walther Kossel, buried.

Honors

  • In 1887 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.
  • Since 1909 he was a regular member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.
  • In 1910 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
  • In his native city of Rostock, the southern station forecourt bears his name at the Rostock central station.
  • In 1933 in Vienna Dobling ( 19th district ) was named the Kosselgasse after him.
  • Built in 1963, meeting center in the student village in Marburg called Albrecht- Kossel - house.
Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz Felix Hoppe-Seyler Emil du Bois-Reymond Biochemistry Roe protamine sulfate Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities Neue Deutsche Biographie Digital Object Identifier Rostock Matrikelportal Integrated Authority File
42603
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