Felix Hoppe-Seyler

Ernst Felix Immanuel Hoppe-Seyler (born December 26, 1825 in Freyburg an der Unstrut, Germany; died August 10, 1895 in Wasserburg am Bodensee) was a German physiologist and chemist. He originally trained to be a physician, and received his medical doctorate from Berlin in 1851. Afterwards, he was an assistant to Rudolf Virchow at the Pathological Institute in Berlin. Hoppe-Seyler preferred scientific research to medicine, and later held positions in anatomy, applied chemistry, and physiological chemistry in Greifswald, Tübingen and Strasbourg. One of his well-known students was Friedrich Miescher (1844-1895).

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His numerous investigations include studies of blood, hemoglobin, pus, bile, milk, and urine. Hoppe-Seyler was the first scientist to describe the optical absorption spectrum of the red blood pigment and its two distinctive absorption bands. He also recognized the binding of oxygen to erythrocytes as a function of hemoglobin, which in turn creates the compound oxyhemoglobin. Hoppe-Seyler was able to obtain hemoglobin in crystalline form, and confirmed that it contained iron.

Hoppe-Seyler also performed studies of chlorophyll, and was able to isolate several different proteins (which he called proteids). He was also the first to purify lecithin and establish its composition. He was one of the founders of biochemistry, physiological chemistry and molecular biology, and his work led to advances in organic chemistry by his pupils and by Paul Ehrlich. In 1877, he created the magazine Physiological Chemistry.