Carlsberg Laboratory

File:Carlsberg Laboratory.jpg

The Carlsberg Laboratory and in the foreground a statue of its founder J. C. Jacobsen.

The Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, was created in 1875 by J. C. Jacobsen, the founder of the Carlsberg brewery, for the sake of advancing biochemical knowledge, especially relating to brewing. It featured a Department of Chemistry and a Department of Physiology. In 1972, the laboratory was renamed the Carlsberg Research Center and was transferred to the brewery.

Overview

The Carlsberg Laboratory was known for protein science and had a series of well-known directors, including Johan Kjeldahl, S. P. L. Sørensen, and Kaj Ulrik Linderstrøm-Lang.

The Carlsberg Laboratory was also known for isolating Saccharomyces carlsbergensis, the species of yeast responsible for lager fermentation, as well as for introducing the concept of pH in acid-basechemistry. The Danish chemist Soren Peder Lauritz Sorensen introduced the concept of pH, a scale for measuring acidity and basicity of substances. While working at the Carlsberg Laboratory, he studied the effect of ion concentration on proteins, and understood the concentration of hydrogen ions was particularly important. To express the hydronium ion (H3O+) concentration in a solution, he devised a logarithmic scale known as the pH scale.

Research from the Carlsberg Laboratory was published in its journal, Comptes rendus des travaux du laboratoire Carlsberg, which is often abbreviated to Compt. rend. trav. lab. Carlsberg or simply C. R. Trav. Lab. Carlsberg.

Directors

Name	Period
Johan Kjeldahl	1876–1900
S. P. L. Sørensen	1901–1938
Kaj Ulrik Linderstrøm-Lang	1938–1959
Martin Ottesen	1959–1987
Klaus Bock	1988–2006
Jens Ø. Duus	2006–2011
Ole Hindsgaul	2011–2014
Birger Lindberg Møller	2014–present

See also

• Emil Christian Hansen
• Kirstine Smith
• Carsten Olsen
• Carlsberg
• J. C. Jacobsen
• Carlsberg Foundation

References

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