- German chemist
awarded a Nobel prize 1930 for his work on haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying,
red colouring matter in blood. He determined the molecular structures
of three important biological pigments: haemoglobin, chlorophyll, and
bilirubin.
Fischer was born in Höchst-am-Main, near Frankfurt, and studied
at Marburg and Munich. He went to Austria as professor at Innsbruck
1915-18 and Vienna 1918-21, returning to Germany as professor at the
Munich Technische Hochschule. In 1945 Fischer's laboratories were destroyed
in an Allied bombing raid and in a fit of despair he committed suicide.
In 1921 Fischer began investigating haemoglobin, concentrating on haem,
the iron-containing non-protein part of the molecule.
By 1929 he had elucidated the complete structure and synthesized haem.
Chlorophyll, he found in the 1930s, has a similar structure. He then
turned to the bile pigments, particularly bilirubin (the pigment responsible
for the colour of the skin of patients suffering from jaundice), and
by 1944 had achieved a complete synthesis of bilirubin.
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