Felix Hoppe-Seyler | |
|---|---|
 Felix Hoppe-Seyler | |
| Born | Ernst Felix Immanuel Hoppe (1825-12-26)26 December 1825 |
| Died | 10 August 1895(1895-08-10) (aged 69) |
| Alma mater | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | physiology chemistry |
| Institutions | |
Ernst Felix Immanuel Hoppe-Seyler (néFelix Hoppe; 26 December 1825 – 10 August 1895) was a Germanphysiologist andchemist, and the principal founder of the disciplines ofbiochemistry andmolecular biology. He had discovered Yeast nucleic acid which is now called RNA in his attempts to follow up and confirmMiescher's results by repeating parts of Miescher's experiments. He took the name Hoppe-Seyler when he was adopted by his brother-in-law, a grandson of the famous theatre principalAbel Seyler.
Hoppe-Seyler was born inFreyburg an der Unstrut in theProvince of Saxony. He originally trained to be a physician inHalle andLeipzig, and received his medical doctorate fromBerlin in 1851. Afterwards, he was an assistant toRudolf Virchow at thePathological Institute in Berlin. Hoppe-Seyler preferred scientific research to medicine, and later held positions inanatomy, appliedchemistry, and physiological chemistry inGreifswald,Tübingen andStrasbourg. At Strasbourg, he was head of the department of biochemistry, the only such institution in Germany at the time.[1]
His work also led to advances inorganic chemistry by his students and byimmunologistPaul Ehrlich. Among his students and collaborators wereFriedrich Miescher (1844–1895) andNobel laureateAlbrecht Kossel (1853–1927).[1]
He was the son of theFreiburgsuperintendent (bishop) Ernst August Dankegott Hoppe. His mother died when he was six years old, and his father three years later. After he became an orphan, he lived for some time in the home of his older sister Klara and her husband, the Annaburg pastorGeorg Seyler, a grandson of the famous theatre directorAbel Seyler.[2] He eventually entered the orphan asylum at Halle, where he attended the gymnasium. In 1864, he was formally adopted by Georg Seyler[3] and added the Seyler name to his birth name.[4][5]
In 1858, he married Agnes Franziska Maria Borstein, and they had one son, Georg Hoppe-Seyler, who became a professor of medicine in Kiel.
Felix Hoppe-Seyler, a physiologist and chemist, became the principal founder of biochemistry. His textPhysiological Chemistry became the standard text for this new branch of applied chemistry.[6]
His numerous investigations include studies ofblood,hemoglobin,pus,bile,milk, andurine. Hoppe-Seyler was the first scientist to describe the optical absorption spectrum of the red bloodpigment and its two distinctive absorption bands. He also recognized the binding ofoxygen toerythrocytes as a function ofhemoglobin, which in turn creates the compoundoxyhemoglobin. Hoppe-Seyler was able to obtain hemoglobin in crystalline form, and confirmed that it containediron.
He became an elected member of theFrench Academy of Sciences, despite the unfavorable political terms between France andGermany at that time, and this helped him gain an international reputation as the keen promoter of science.[7]
Hoppe-Seyler performed important studies ofchlorophyll. He is also credited with the isolation of several differentproteins (which he referred to as "proteids"). In addition, he was the first scientist to purifylecithin and establish its composition. In 1877, he founded theZeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie (Journal for Physiological Chemistry), and was its editor until his death in 1895.[1] He died inWasserburg am Bodensee in theKingdom of Bavaria.
