Buchner, Eduard (1860-1917)

German chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1907 for his biochemical research and discovery of the process of cell-free fermentation. In 1897 he observed that fermentation could be produced mechanically, by cell-free extracts. Buchner argued that it was not the whole yeast cell that produced fermentation, but only the presence of the enzyme he named zymase.

Buchner was born and educated in Munich, and held a number of academic posts in Germany from 1888. He was killed by a grenade in World War I.

Buchner had been interested in the problems of alcoholic fermentation since the 1880s, and showed 1886 that the absence of oxygen was not necessary for fermentation, but his discovery of zymase came about by accident. In 1893 Buchner and his brother Hans Buchner (1850-1902), a bacteriologist, found a way to make a cell-free liquid extract of micro-organisms. They were using a yeast extract for pharmaceutical studies and added a thick sugar syrup to stop any bacterial action. Buchner fully expected the sugar to act as a preservative, but it had the opposite effect and carbon dioxide was produced. The sugar had fermented, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol, in the same way as if whole yeast cells had been present.

It was soon realized that the conversion of sugar into alcohol by means of yeast juice is a series of stepwise reactions, and that zymase is really a mixture of several enzymes.