Adolf Butenandt

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Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt (March 24, 1903January 18, 1995) was a German biochemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 for his "work on sex hormones." He was forced by the Nazi government to decline the award. [1]

Born in Lehe, near Bremen, he finished his studies in Göttingen with a Ph.D. in chemistry, and after his Habilitation he became lecturer in Göttingen 1931. He was professor at the technical university in Danzig 1933, and after a visit in the US, he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (later the Max Planck Institute) for Biochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem beginning in 1936. When the institute moved to Tübingen in 1945 he became a professor at the University of Tübingen. In 1956, when the institute relocated to Martinsried, a suburb of Munich, Butenandt became a professor at the University of Munich. He also served as president of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science from 1960 to 1972.

Butenandt is credited with the discovery and naming of the silkworm moth pheromone Bombykol in 1959.

Butenandt died in Munich in 1995. He was 91.


[edit] References and Notes

  1. ^ NobelPrize.org


[edit] External links