Hans Kornberg

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sir Hans Kornberg
Born
Hans Leo Kornberg

(1928-01-14)14 January 1928
Died16 December 2019(2019-12-16) (aged 91)
NationalityGerman
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom
Alma materUniversity of Sheffield
RelativesSusanna Cork (granddaughter)
Benedict Cork (grandson)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsBiochemistry
Institutions

Sir Hans Leo Kornberg,

from 1982 to 1995.

Early life and education

Kornberg was born in 1928 in

On leaving school he became a junior laboratory technician for

Hans Adolf Krebs at the University of Sheffield who encouraged him to study further and apply for a scholarship at the same university. He graduated with a BSc Honours in Chemistry in 1949. His interest moved to biochemistry and he studied in the Faculty of Medicine, receiving a PhD degree in 1953 on the studies on urease in mammalian gastric mucosa.[3][6]

Career

After receiving

Oxford University and offered him a post there. This partnership produced a paper in Nature,[7] concerning their discovery of the glyoxylate cycle, and also a joint book entitled Energy Transformations in Living Matter in 1957.[8][9]

In 1960, he was appointed to the first Chair in Biochemistry at the University of Leicester, which he held until 1975.[10] Later, he was elected as Sir William Dunn Chair of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Hans became a lecturer at Worcester College between 1958 and 1961, and was also the first person to receive The Biochemical Society's annual Colworth Medal on 1963.[11]

He received Christ's Fellowship in 1975 and was elected as the 34th Master of the Christ's College, Cambridge from 1982 to 1995. In 1995, he retired to take up a position as a Professor of Biology at Boston University, USA, where he taught biochemistry.[12]

Honours and awards

He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1965 and the same year awarded the Colworth Medal of The Biochemical Society.[11] In 1973, he was awarded the Otto Warburg Medal of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In the 1978 Queen's Birthday Honours List he was knighted for "services to science". He has been awarded 11 honorary doctorates and has been elected into membership of:

and Honorary Fellowship of

  • The Biochemical Society (UK)
  • The Royal Society of Biology
  • Brasenose College (Oxford)
  • Worcester College (Oxford)
  • Wolfson College (Cambridge)
  • The Foulkes Foundation (London)[4]

Personal life

While at Oxford, he met and married his first wife, Monica King, in 1956 and had four children: Julia, Rachel, Jonathan and Simon. The children were raised Catholic. Monica died in 1989. In 1991, he married a Jewish woman, Donna Haber.[9] Sir Hans Kornberg died on 16 December 2019.[9][2]

References

  1. PMID 5337756
    .
  2. ^ a b Obituaries, Telegraph (18 December 2019). "Professor Sir Hans Kornberg, German-born biochemist and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge who did pioneering research into how bacteria work – obituary". The Telegraph.
  3. ^
    PMID 12556462
    .
  4. ^ a b "Curriculum Vitae: Sir Hans Kornberg" (PDF). The Academy of Europe. 2015.
  5. ^ Offord, Catherine (27 January 2020). "Biochemist Hans Kornberg Dies". The Scientist Magazine®. Retrieved 5 September 2020.
  6. ^ a b Evan, Gerard (10 January 2020). "The passing of Professor Sir Hans Leo Kornberg". bioc.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 September 2020.
  7. S2CID 40858130
    .
  8. .
  9. ^ . Retrieved 5 September 2020.
  10. ^ "Lectures by former students commemorate Department of Biochemistry's golden anniversary — University of Leicester". www2.le.ac.uk. 20 June 2011. Retrieved 5 September 2020.
  11. ^ a b "The passing of Professor Sir Hans Kornberg | Worcester College". worc.ox.ac.uk. 20 December 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2020.
  12. ^ "Sad News: Professor Sir Hans Kornberg FRS". christs.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 September 2020.

External links

Academic offices
Preceded by
New position
Professor of Biochemistry, University of Leicester
1960–1975
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Frank George Young
Cambridge University

1975–1995
Succeeded by
Preceded by Master of Christ's College, Cambridge
1982–1995
Succeeded by