Robert Huber

Robert Huber is a German biochemist and Nobel laureate.

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He was born 20 February 1937 in Munich where his father, Sebastian, was a bank cashier. He was educated at the Humanistische 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 cyanobacteria, and subsequently applying X-ray crystallography to quantify the protein's structure. 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 plants.^[1]

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.

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