Stamp Vignette on Medical Science

Robert Huber­Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Marc A. Shampo, Ph.D., andRobert A. Kyle, M.D.

Robert Huber, a German biochemist, shared the 1988Nobel Prize for chemistry with two German scientists,

Johann Deisenhofer (1943- ) and Hartmut Michel(1948- ), for their determination of the structure of aprotein complex that is essential to photosynthesis in bacte­ria. Michel crystallized the membrane-bound protein pho­tosynthetic reaction center of the Rhodopseudomonasviridis bacterium , and then Huber and Deisenhofer used x­ray crystallography to elucidate the positions of approxi­mately 10,000 atoms in the protein complex. By 1985, thethree scientists had succeeded in describing the complete

structure of the protein that is essential to photosynthesis incertain bacteria. Although bacterial photosynthesis issomewhat simpler than that in plants , the work of Huber,Deisenhofer, and Michel substantially increased the under­standing of the mechanisms of photosynthesis in general.Their work had other applications as well because mem­brane-bound proteins are important in the understanding ofthe membrane structure of cells in health and in disease.

Huber was born on Feb. 20, 1937, in Munich, Germany.He graduated from the Technical University in Munich in1960 and earned a Ph.D. degree there in 1963. Afterreceiving his doctorate, he joined the Max Planck Institutefor Biochemistry at Martinsried, where he worked withDeisenhofer and Michel. He also worked at the TechnicalUniversit y in Munich .

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Huber was awardedmany honors and medals for his scientific work, includinghonorary doctorates from the University of Louvain (Bel­gium) in 1987, the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) in1989, and the University of Rome (Italy) in 1991, the E. K.Frey Medal in 1972, the Otto Warburg Medal in 1977, andthe Emil von Behring Medal in 1982. He was honored on astamp issued by Sierra Leone in 1995.

For personal use. Mass reproduce only with permission from Mayo Clinic Proceedings.