Max Bergmann

Max Bergmann
Max Bergmann
Born February 12, 1886(1886-02-12)
Fürth, Germany
Died November 7, 1944(1944-11-07) (aged 58)
New York, United States
Residence Germany, United States
Nationality German, American
Institutions Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research
Doctoral advisor Hermann Emil Fischer
Known for Carboxybenzyl protecting group

Max Bergmann (1886–1944) was a Jewish-German biochemist. He was the first to use the Carboxybenzyl protecting group for the synthesis of oligopeptides.

Life and work

Bergmann was born in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany on February 12, 1886.

After he received his Ph.D, in 1911, he became the assistant to Hermann Emil Fischer at the University of Berlin, where he stayed until the Fischer's suicide in 1919.

Bergmann was the first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research in Dresden, which was created in 1921 and upon which the Max-Planck-Institute was based. He developed the Bergmann-Zervas carbobenzoxy method for the synthesis of polypeptides.

His is considered a pioneer of applied sciences. He specialized in decoding protein and peptide structures. He also researched their synthesis.

Bergmann left Germany and his institute in the year 1933 and was active thereafter at Rockefeller University in New York. There he was the main scientist for protein chemistry and contributed considerably to the fact that the United States reached a top position in the area of molecular biology. Two eventual Nobel Prize winners (William Howard Stein and Stanford Moore) worked in his laboratory.

Bergmann died in the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, on November 7, 1944.

In the year 2002 in Dresden, the Max Bergmann Center was created.

References


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