Manfred Eigen
| Manfred Eigen | |
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Manfred Eigen, Göttingen 1996
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9 May 1927 (age 89) Bochum, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | Biophysical chemistry |
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| Alma mater | University of Göttingen |
| Thesis | Ermittlung der molekularen Struktur reiner Flüssigkeiten und Lösungen aus thermischen und kalorischen Eigenschaften (1951) |
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Website www |
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Manfred Eigen (born 9 May 1927) is a German biophysical chemist who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on measuring fast chemical reactions.
Eigen was drafted into the German Army at 15 serving in an anti-aircraft unit and captured by the Russians at the end of the Second World War. He escaped captivity and walked to Göttingen where he joined the first post-war cohort of students even though he never finished his high school qualifications.
Eigen received his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen and is a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He is an honorary professor of the Braunschweig University of Technology. From 1982 to 1993, Eigen was president of the German National Merit Foundation. Eigen is currently a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
In 1967, Eigen was awarded, along with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They were distinguished for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions induced in response to very short pulses of energy.
In addition, Eigen's name is linked with the theory of the chemical hypercycle, the cyclic linkage of reaction cycles as an explanation for the self-organization of prebiotic systems, which he described with Peter Schuster in 1977. He founded two biotechnology companies, Evotec and Direvo.
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