Joachim Hämmerling

Dr. Joachim Hämmerling ForMemRS (March 9, 1901 - August 5, 1980) was a pioneering Danish-German biologist funded by Nazi Germany who determined that the nucleus of a cell controls the development of organisms. His experimentation with the green algae Acetabularia provided a model subject for modern cell biological research, and proved the existence of morphogenetic substances, or mRNP.

Joachim August Wilhelm Hämmerling was born March 9, 1901 in Berlin. He was educated at the University of Berlin and University of Marburg. He received his doctorate in 1924.

From 1924 to 1931 he was a research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, and from 1931 to 1940 a lecturer. In 1940 he became Director of the German-Italian Institute of Marine Biology. In 1942 he became an associate professor of marine biology at the University of Berlin, before becoming the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Langenargen am Bodensee in in 1946. From 1949-1970 he served as the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology, ultimately retiring in 1970.

Hämmerling began growing Acetabularia in laboratories in the 1930s.

There he discovered that the plant had one cell and the nucleus was always located in the rhizoid. Then he began studying the roles of the nucleus and cytoplasm by experimenting with the Acetabularia.

In 1938 while working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Hämmerling received a grant through a biology division within the Third Reich headed by Konrad Meyer to study exclusively the effect of the nucleus on development.

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