Karl Meyer (biochemist)
Karl Meyer ( born September 4, 1899 in Kerpen, † 18 May 1990) was a German biochemist.
Mayer has substances of the connective tissue characterized, including various components of the collagen and the ground substance of the extracellular matrix, particularly glycosaminoglycans ( mucopolysaccharides ), and coined the term " hyaluronic acid ".
Life
Meyer grew up in Kerpen, where he attended the Jewish school and then the Catholic grammar school. 1917 Meyer was drafted as a 17- year-old and served in the First World War on the Western Front in France and Flanders.
After the war, Meyer studied medicine and received his doctorate in 1924 at the University of Cologne. After a clinical activity on a tuberculosis ward Meyer went to Berlin to join a degree in Chemistry, Nobel Prize winner Otto Fritz Meyerhof recently at the local Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. 1927 Meyer received his doctorate in Chemistry with a thesis on the lactic acid metabolism of the muscle. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Meyer went to the later Nobel laureate Richard Kuhn at the ETH Zurich, where he worked on the oxidative abilities of Häme.
1930 brought Herbert Evans Meyer as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. 1932 Meyer decided not to return to Germany, but to assume a position as a research assistant at Columbia University in New York City before he got there in 1933 a position as assistant professor in ophthalmology. Here he dealt with the lysozyme in the tear fluid and later with the composition of the liquid in the vitreous body of the eye, where he identified the hyaluronic acid and so named and their metabolism - including hyaluronidases - explored. He also dealt with other glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans. From 1967 to 1976 Meyer was a professor of biochemistry at Yeshiva University in New York City before he was a ( Emeritus ) Professor at Columbia University again.
Awards (selection)
The Society for Complex Carbohydrates (now the Society for Glycobiology ) awards since 1991 the Karl Meyer Award for Glycoconjugate Research.