Herbert A. Hauptman

Herbert Aaron Hauptman ( born February 14, 1917 in New York City; † October 23, 2011 in Buffalo ) was an American mathematician and biophysicist. In 1985 he was awarded jointly with Jerome Karle of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Hauptman was the eldest son of Israel Hauptman and Leah Rosenfeld, he had two brothers. He studied mathematics at the City College of New York in 1937, he obtained a bachelor's degree (BS ), 1940 Columbia University awarded him a master's in mathematics. After that, he was employed during the Second World War as a soldier in the Weather Service of the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific.

In 1947 Hauptman to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, where his collaboration with Jerome Karle began. Both were then taken into the graduate program of the University of Maryland, College Park, where Hauptman 1955 earned doctoral degrees.

Since 1970 he was a professor at the Medical Foundation of Buffalo in New York (named since 1994 as a Hauptman - Woodward Medical Research Institute ), where in 1972 he was the Director of Science, and in 1988 its president.

Hauptman and Jerome Karle 1953-1956 developed a statistical method for the direct determination of crystal structures by X-ray analysis, an important analysis method that is used today computerized world. Particular importance has this method in the structure determination of organic and biologically important macromolecules. Along with Jerome Karle 1985 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of " direct methods " for crystal structure determination.

Hauptman died in 2011; He left behind two daughters and his wife, whom he married in 1940 Edith Citrynell.

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