Manfred Eigen

Manfred Eigen
Manfred Eigen, Göttingen 1996
Born	May 9, 1927 (1927-05-09) (age 97) Bochum, Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Biophysical chemistry
Institutions	Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Braunschweig University of Technology
Alma mater	University of Göttingen
Known for	Chemical reactions
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1967)

Dutch Queen Beatrix meets 5 Nobel prize winners (1983): Paul Berg, Christian de Duve, Steven Weinberg, Manfred Eigen & Nicolaas Bloembergen

Manfred Eigen (born May 9, 1927) is a German biophysical chemist who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on measuring fast chemical reactions.

Life

He was drafted into the German Army at 15 serving in an anti-aircraft unit and captured by the Russians at the end of the Second World War. He escaped captivity and walked to Gottingen where he joined the first post-war cohort of students even though he never finished his high school qualifications.

Career

Eigen received his PhD at the University of Göttingen and is a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He is an honorary professor of the Braunschweig University of Technology. From 1982 to 1993, Eigen was president of the German National Merit Foundation. Eigen is currently a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In 1967, Eigen was awarded, along with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They were distinguished for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions induced in response to very short pulses of energy.

In addition, Eigen's name is linked with the theory of the chemical hypercycle, the cyclic linkage of reaction cycles as an explanation for the self-organization of prebiotic systems, which he described with Peter Schuster in 1977. He founded two biotechnology companies, Evotec and Direvo.

Honours and awards

• Otto Hahn Prize for Chemistry and Physics (1962)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1967), shared with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter, for his studies on the kinetics of extremely fast running chemical reactions with relaxation methods
• Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (now the Russian Academy of Sciences) (1976)
• Corresponding Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (1972)
• Faraday Lectureship Prize (Royal Society of Chemistry, 1977)
• Patron of the annual XLAB Science Festival in Göttingen
• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
• Lower Saxony State Prize for Science (1980)
• Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (1992)
• Helmholtz Medal (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994)
• Max Planck Research Award (1994), jointly with Rudolf Rigler of the Karolinska Institute
• Honorary member of the Ruhr University Bochum (2001)
• Honorary doctorate from Harvard University
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore (2005)
• Wilhelm Exner Medal (2011).

Students

Eigen's students included Geoffrey W. Hoffmann, Ariel Fernandez and Dietmar Porschke.

See also

• Quasispecies model

Bibliography

• Eigen (1971) Selforganization of matter and the evolution of biological macromolecules. Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 58, Nr. 10, pp. 465–523.
• Eigen & Schuster (1977) The Hypercycle. A Principle of Natural Self-Organisation. Part A: Emergence of the Hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften Vol. 64, pp. 541–565.
• Eigen & Schuster (1978) The Hypercycle. A Principle of Natural Self-Organisation. Part B: The Abstract Hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften Vol. 65, pp. 7–41.
• Eigen & Schuster (1978) The Hypercycle. A Principle of Natural Self-Organisation. Part C: The Realistic Hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften Vol. 65, pp. 341–369.

• Manfred Eigen and Peter Schuster The Hypercycle: A principle of natural self-organization, 1979, Springer ISBN 0-387-09293-5
• Manfred Eigen, Ruthild Winkler: The Laws of the Game: How The Principles of Nature Govern Chance, 1983, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-02566-5
• Manfred Eigen, "Molekulare Selbstorganisation und Evolution." (Self organization of matter and the evolution of biological macro molecules.) Naturwissenschaften 58 (10). 1971 pp. 465–523. In English. Influential theoretical paper on origin-of-life biochemistry.

External links

• Biography of Manfred Eigen
• Manfred Eigen tells his life story at Web of Stories (video)
• Manfred Eigen's homepage at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
• Interview with Manfred Eigen by Harry Kroto, NL Freeview video provided by the Vega Science Trust.
• "Falls ein Gott die Naturgesetze erschuf, so erschuf er auch das Leben durch Evolution" (Ger) Interview with Manfred Eigen from 2004
• debate on theory and proof