Kurt Wüthrich received one of the two 2002 chemistry awards “for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution”. The other award was shared by John Fenn (USA) and Koichi Tanaka (Japan) for their development of mass spectrometric methods for biological macromolecules.
Wüthrich was born in Aarberg, Switzerland, in 1938, and grew up in the farmland area of Lyss in the Berner Seeland. The rural environment provoked an interest in natural science, and he is a keen sports angler. He had intended to become a forest engineer, but then discovered science and competitive sports at the Gymnasium in the nearby bilingual city of Biel/Bienne. As a result, he studied chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the University of Bern before gaining his PhD in organic chemistry in 1964 under Silvio Fallab at the University of Basel. From 1965–67 he worked at the University of California, Berkeley with Robert Connick, where he first used with the new technique of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the hydration of metal complexes. This was followed by two years with Robert Shulman at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, where he was put in charge of one of the first superconducting NMR spectrometers and started studies of his hemoglobin (‘hemoglobinKW’) and other proteins.
Wüthrich returned to Switzerland in 1969, joining the ETH Zürich (Federal Institute of Technology), and rising to professor of biophysics by 1980. There he collaborated with Richard Ernst and others on developing two-dimensional NMR experiments, and established the nuclear Overhauser effect to measure distances within proteins. It was partly for this work, and his leadership in NMR spectroscopy generally, that Wüthrich received the Nobel Prize.
NMR spectroscopy has many uses in natural science and is invaluable in understanding protein and nucleic acid structure and function. The ability to rapidly analyse proteins in detail has led to increased understanding of the processes of life. By creating images of protein molecules in solution, scientists can understand their function in the cell. The technique has revolutionised the development of pharmaceuticals and is being used in foodstuff control and early diagnosis of cancer. Wüthrich continues to work in the fi eld, maintaining his Zürich laboratory and, since 2001, working at The Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California. While working as a ski instructor in his early 20s, Wüthrich met schoolteacher Marianne Briner. They were married in 1963, obtained their sports degrees (Eidgenössisches Turnund Sportlehrer-Diplom) at the University of Basel, and have a son, Bernhard Andrew, and a daughter, Karin Lynn.
This text and the picture of the Nobel Laureate were taken from the book: "NOBELS. Nobel Laureates photographed by Peter Badge" (WILEY-VCH, 2008).
Picture: © Peter Badge/ Foundation Lindau Nobelprizewinners Meetings at Lake Constance |