Walther F. Goebel

Walther Frederick Goebel ( born December 24, 1899 in Palo Alto, California, † November 1, 1993 in Essex, Connecticut) was an American immunologist and chemists.

Goebel's father, Julius Goebel taught German at Stanford University ( at that time experienced the family and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 that destroyed her house ) and later at the University of Illinois. He studied chemistry at the University of Illinois with a Master 's degree in 1921 and his doctorate at William A. Noyes, 1923. As a post-doctoral researcher, he was 1923/24, with Richard Willstätter in Munich. During this time he also experienced the Beer Hall Putsch, where his hat was shot off his head. He was from 1924 at the Rockefeller Institute, later the Rockefeller University, where he remained for the rest of his career. From 1934 he was an associate member in 1944 and a full member. After conversion to a University In 1957 he was a professor. In 1970 he retired but continued to work at the Walker Laboratory, Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, Rye.

With Oswald T. Avery and Michael Heidelberger, he studied at the same entry in the Rockefeller Institute, the type-specific chemical components of pneumococci and they found that their antigens are composed of polysaccharides, the first indication of such antigens in bacteria. Goebel studied these antigens in the next 20 years. During World War II, and then he turned to the study of diarrhea - causing bacteria.

He was an honorary doctorate from the Rockefeller University ( 1978) and Middlebury College (1959 ) and since 1958 a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1973 he was one of the first to Avery - Landsteiner Prize.

Goebel was married twice and had from his first marriage ( with Cornelia van Rensselaer Robb, Marriage 1940) two daughters.