Hartmut Michel is a German biochemist who at age 40 received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1988 together with Johann Deisenhofer and Robert Huber “for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre“. They were the first to succeed in unravelling the full picture of how a membrane protein is built up.  Michel started the project and developed the technology to crystallize membrane proteins which was the essential prerequisite for the structure determination. This was done in collaboration with Johann Deisenhofer (“Hans“). Hans worked in Robert Huber‘s department at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry at Martinsried near Munich.

Hartmut Michel was born in Ludwigsburg, Germany, in 1948 with a family background of workers and craftsmen.  So hard manual work is not unknown to him. Being outstanding at primary school he was allowed to high school and university. He studied biochemistry at the university of Tübingen and in Munich. He received his PhD at the University of Würzburg with work on the light energy conversion by halobacteria. Together with his supervisor Dieter Oesterhelt he moved to Martinsried where Michel became a group leader focussing on the structure determination of membrane proteins. In 1987 he became director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he still works. His research interests shifted to the protein complexes of cellular respiration and transporters.

He is a pronounced critic of biofuel production and usage which he considers as highly inefficient and detrimental.

More on Hartmut Michel and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1988

Photo credit: Shau Chung Shin/Max Planck Institute of Biophysics