Martin Karplus

Martin Karplus
Nobel Prize Laureate Martin Karplus during press conference in Stockholm, December 2013
Born	(1930-03-15) March 15, 1930 Vienna, Austria
Citizenship	American, Austrian
Institutions	Harvard University Université de Strasbourg Columbia University University of Illinois
Alma mater	California Institute of Technology Harvard University
Thesis	A quantum-mechanical discussion of the bifluoride ion (1954)
Doctoral advisor	Linus Pauling
Notable awards	Irving Langmuir Award (1987) ForMemRS (2000) Linus Pauling Award (2004) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2013)
Website chemistry.harvard.edu/people/martin-karplus

Martin Karplus (born March 15, 1930) is an Austrian-born American theoretical chemist. He is the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, emeritus at Harvard University. He is also Director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Strasbourg, France. Karplus received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".

Education and Career

After earning an AB degree from Harvard College in 1950, Karplus pursued graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology. He completed his Ph.D. in 1953 under Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling. According to Pauling, Karplus "was [his] most brilliant student." He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (1953–55) where he worked with Charles Coulson. Karplus taught at the University of Illinois and then Columbia University(1960–67) before moving to Harvard in 1967. He established a research group in Strasbourg, France, after two sabbatical visits between 1992 and 1995 in the NMR laboratory of Jean-François Lefèvre at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg.

Research

Karplus has contributed to many fields in physical chemistry, including chemical dynamics, quantum chemistry, and most notably, molecular dynamics simulations of biological macromolecules. He has also been influential in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, particularly to the understanding of nuclear spin-spin coupling and electron spin resonance spectroscopy. The Karplus equation describing the correlation between coupling constants and dihedral angles in protein nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is named after him.

His current research is concerned primarily with the properties of molecules of biological interest. His group originated and currently coordinates the development of the CHARMM program for molecular dynamics simulations. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He has supervised over 200 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in his long career (since 1955) in the University of Illinois, Columbia University (1960 - 1967), and Harvard University. He is a recipient of the Christian B. Anfinsen Award, given in 2001.

Books

• CL Brooks III, M Karplus, BM Pettitt. Proteins: A Theoretical Perspective of Dynamics, Structure and Thermodynamics, Volume LXXI, in: Advances in Chemical Physics, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1988.
• Martin Karplus and Richard N. Porter. Atoms and Molecules: An Introduction for Students of Physical Chemistry. W. A. Benjamin, New York 1970.

Notable Students and Postdocs

Karplus mentored the following students and postdoctoral researchers (in alphabetical order)

• Ioan Andricioaei (University of California, Irvine)
• Georgios Archontis (University of Cyprus)
• Donald Bashford (St. Jude Children's Research Hospital)
• John Brady (Cornell University)
• Bernard Brooks (National Institutes of Health)
• Charles L. Brooks III [1] (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• Paul Brumer (University of Toronto)
• Axel T. Brünger [2] (Stanford University)
• Rafael Brüschweiler (Ohio State University)
• Matthias Buck (Case Western)
• Amedeo Caflisch (University of Zurich)
• David Case (Rutgers University)
• Rob Coalson (University of Pittsburgh)
• Qiang Cui (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
• Aaron Dinner (University of Chicago)
• Roland Dunbrack (Fox Chase Cancer Center)
• Ron Elber (University of Texas)
• Martin J. Field (IBS)
• Jiali Gao (University of Minnesota)
• Bruce Gelin (w/ Karplus and McCammon published the first MD simulation of BPTI)--"Dynamics of Folded Proteins")
• Hong Guo (University of Tennessee)
• Russ Hemley (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
• Barry Honig (Columbia University)
• Rod Hubbard (University of York)
• Toshiko Ichiye (Georgetown University)
• Sergei Krivov (University of Leeds)
• Krzysztof Kuczera (University of Kansas)
• John Kuriyan [3] (University of California Berkeley)
• Themis Lazaridis (City College of New York)
• Ron Levy (Temple University)
• Carmay Lim (Academia Sinica])
• Jianpeng Ma (Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University)
• Alexander MacKerell (University of Maryland)
• J. Andrew McCammon [4] (UCSD) (w/ Karplus and Gelin) published the first MD simulation of BPTI (see above publication)
• Markus Meuwly (University of Basel)
• Olivier Michielin (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Lausanne and University Hospital of Lausanne)
• Stephen Michnick (University of Montreal)
• Andrew Miranker (Yale University)
• Lennart Nilsson (Karolinska Institutet)
• Iwao Ohmine (Institute for Molecular Science, JP)
• Emanuele Paci (University of Leeds)
• Richard W. Pastor (National Institutes of Health)
• Lee Pedersen (University of North Carolina)
• B. Montgomery Pettitt (University of Texas Medical Branch [5], Baylor College of Medicine, The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC))
• Carol Post (Purdue University)
• Peter Rossky (University of Texas)
• Benoît Roux [6] (University of Chicago)
• Andrej Šali [7] (University of California, San Francisco)
• Klaus Schulten [8] (University of Illinois)
• Eugene Shakhnovich (Harvard University)
• Jeremy C. Smith (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
• David J. States (The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston)
• John Straub (Boston University)
• Collin Stultz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Bruce Tidor (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Arjan van der Vaart (University of South Florida)
• Wilfred van Gunsteren (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich)
• Michele Vendruscolo (University of Cambridge)
• Dennis Vitkup (Columbia University)
• Arieh Warshel [9] (University of Southern California) (co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Karplus and Michael Levitt)
• Masa Watanabe (University of Saint Mary)
• Darrin York (Rutgers University)
• Yaoqi Zhou (Griffith University)

Publications

• Koeppl, G. W. and M. Karplus. "Comparison of 3D Classical Trajectory and Transition-State Theory Reaction Cross Sections," Harvard University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (October 1970).
• Tang, K. T. and M. Karplus. "Quantum Theory of (H,H{Sub 2}) Scattering: Approximate Treatments of Reactive Scattering," Columbia University, Harvard University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (October 1970).
• Shizgal B. and M. Karplus. "Nonequilibrium Contribution to the Rate of Reaction. III. Isothermal Multicomponent Systems," Harvard University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (October 1970).
• Karplus, M. "Theoretical Studies in Chemical Kinetics - Annual Report, 1970.," Harvard University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (October 1970).

Awards and honours

Karplus was awarded the Irving Langmuir Award in 1987. He became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991 and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2000. He was awarded the Linus Pauling Award in 2004 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013.

Personal life and biography

Karplus was a child when his family fled from the Nazi-occupation in Austria a few days after the Anschluss in March 1938, spending several months in Zürich, Switzerland and La Baule, France before immigrating to the United States. Prior to their immigration to the United States, the family was known for being "an intellectual and successful secular Jewish family" in Vienna. His grandfather, Johann Paul Karplus (1866-1936) was a highly acclaimed professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna. He is nephew, by marriage, of the famous sociologist, philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno and grandnephew of the physicist Robert von Lieben. His brother, Robert Karplus, was an internationally recognized physicist and educator at University of California, Berkeley.

External links

• Martin Karplus academic genealogy and list of PhD & Postdoc trainees
• Publications
• Karplus research group at Harvard University
• Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory at University of Strasbourg
• Biography at Michigan State University website
• Martin Karplus photography website
• Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy