Joachim Hämmerling

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Joachim Hämmerling
Born(1901-03-09)9 March 1901
Died5 August 1980(1980-08-05) (aged 79)

Dr. Joachim Hämmerling

mRNP
.

Early life and professions

Joachim August Wilhelm Hämmerling was born on 9 March 1901 in

University of Berlin and University of Marburg
. He received his doctorate in 1924.

From 1924 to 1931 he was a research assistant at the

Max Planck Institute
for Marine Biology, ultimately retiring in 1970.

Acetabularia experiments

Hämmerling began growing Acetabularia in laboratories in the 1930s.[2][3]

There he discovered that the plant had one cell and the nucleus was always located in the rhizoid.[3] Then he began studying the roles of the nucleus and cytoplasm by experimenting with the Acetabularia.[4]

In 1938 while working at the

Third Reich headed by Konrad Meyer to study exclusively the effect of the nucleus on development.[5]

1943 breakthrough

The groundbreaking experiment came in 1943 when he determined the role of the nucleus.[6] In his experiments, he removed the nucleus from a specific species of Acetabularia called A. crenulata and grafted it onto the cell of another a Acetabularia species called A. mediterranea, in which Hämmerling had removed specific parts of the organism. Shortly thereafter, the mediterranea regenerated the removed parts, but with the characteristics from the crenulata species.[4]

This experiment demonstrated that the nucleus contains the genetic information and controls development.

mRNP.[3]

Species namesake

Because of his work with Acetabularia, when a new species of the plant was discovered in the Pacific Ocean in the 1970s, it was named after Hämmerling and called A. haemmerlingii.[8]

Later years

In 1970 he was elected a Foreign Member at the

Royal Society of London
. He died on 5 August 1980.

References