Fischer, Hans (1881-1945)

German chemist awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1930 for his work on haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying, red colouring matter in blood. He determined the molecular structures of three important biological pigments: haemoglobin, chlorophyll, and bilirubin.

Fischer was born in Höchst-am-Main, near Frankfurt, and studied at Marburg and Munich. He went to Austria as professor at Innsbruck 1915-18 and Vienna 1918-21, returning to Germany as professor at the Munich Technische Hochschule. In 1945 Fischer's laboratories were destroyed in an Allied bombing raid and in a fit of despair he committed suicide.

In 1921 Fischer began investigating haemoglobin, concentrating on haem, the iron-containing non-protein part of the molecule. By 1929 he had elucidated the complete structure and synthesized haem. Chlorophyll, he found in the 1930s, has a similar structure. He then turned to the bile pigments, particularly bilirubin (the pigment responsible for the colour of the skin of patients suffering from jaundice), and by 1944 had achieved a complete synthesis of bilirubin.