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.