Robert Huber

Robert Huber is a German biochemist and Nobel laureate.

He was born 20 February 1937 in Munich where his father, Sebastian, was a bank cashier. He was educated at the Humanistisches Karls-Gymnasium from 1947 to 1956 and then studied chemistry at the Technische Hochschule, receiving his diploma in 1960. He stayed, and did research into using crystallography to elucidate the structure of organic compounds.

In 1971 he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry where his team developed methods for the crystallography of proteins.

In 1988 he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry jointly with Johann Deisenhofer and Hartmut Michel. The trio were recognized for their work in first crystallizing an intramembrane protein important in photosynthesis in purple bacteria, and subsequently applying X-ray crystallography to elucidate the protein's structure[1]. The information provided the first insight into the structural bodies that performed the integral function of photosynthesis. This insight could be translated to understand the more complex analogue of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria[2][3] which is essentially the same as that in chloroplasts of higher plants.

He is married with four children.

He has recently taken up a post at the Cardiff University and will spearhead the development of Structural Biology at the university on a part time basis.

Since 2005 he is doing research at the Center for medical biotechnology of the University of Duisburg-Essen

Nobel Laureate public lecture for high school students and chemistry/science teachers 'Beauty and function of proteins, the building blocks of life'

* Autobiographical information at www.nobel.org

Publications

Robert Huber was one of the original editors of the Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry
References

1. ^ J. Deisenhofer, O. Epp, K. Miki, R. Huber & H. Michel (1985). "Structure of the protein subunits in the photosynthetic reaction centre of Rhodopseudomonas viridis at 3Å resolution". Nature 318 (6047): 618–624. doi:10.1038/318618a0.
2. ^ Zouni, A., Witt, H.T., Kern, J., Fromme, P., Krauss, N., Saenger, W., Orth, P. (2001). "Crystal structure of photosystem II from Synechococcus elongatus at 3.8 A resolution.". Nature 409: 739–743.
3. ^ Guskov, A., Kern, J., Gabdulkhakov, A., Broser, M., Zouni, A., Saenger, W. (2009). "Cyanobacterial photosystem II at 2.9-A resolution and the role of quinones, lipids, channels and chloride". Nat.Struct.Mol.Biol. 16: 334–342.