Important personalitiesBack

Ludwig Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel (16 September 1853 – 5 July 1927) was a German biochemist and pioneer in the study of genetics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1910 for his work in determining the chemical composition of nucleic acids, the genetic substance of biological cells.

Kossel isolated and described the five organic compounds that are present in nucleic acid: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil. These compounds were later shown to be nucleobases, and are key in the formation of DNA and RNA, the genetic material found in all living cells.

Kossel was an important influence on and collaborator with other important researchers in biochemistry, including Henry Drysdale Dakin, Friedrich Miescher, Edwin B. Hart, and his professor and mentor, Felix Hoppe-Seyler. Kossel was editor of the Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie (Journal of Physiological Chemistry) from 1895 until his death.

Kossel also conducted important research into the composition of protein, and his research predicted the discovery of the polypeptide nature of the protein molecule.

The Albrecht Kossel Institute for Neuroregeneration at the University of Rostock is named in his honor.


Nobel prize

Kossel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1910 for his research in cell biology, the chemical composition of the cell nucleus, and for his work in isolating and describing nucleic acids. The award was presented on 10 December 1910.

In the autumn of 1911, Kossel was invited to the United States to deliver the Herter Lecture at Johns Hopkins. Traveling with his wife Luise and daughter Gertrude, he took the opportunity to travel and to visit acquaintances, one of which was Eugene W. Hilgard, professor emeritus of agricultural chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, who was also his wife's cousin. He also visited and delivered lectures at several other universities, including the University of Chicago.

On the occasion of his visit to New York City, Kossel was interviewed by a reporter from the New York Times. Kossel's English was reportedly very good, and his self-effacing modesty is voluminously mentioned in the reporter's account.

His Herter lecture at Johns Hopkins was titled, "The Proteins". This was the only time Kossel ever visited the United States.