Reinhart Heinrich
| Reinhart Heinrich | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
April 24, 1946 Dresden, Germany |
| Died | October 23, 2006 (aged 60) Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | Systems biology, biophysics |
| Institutions |
Humboldt University of Berlin Charité |
| Alma mater | Dresden University of Technology |
| Known for | metabolism, signal transduction |
| Notable awards | Humboldt Prize, Brigitte Reimann Prize |
Reinhart Heinrich (24 April 1946 – 23 October 2006) was a German biophysicist.
He was professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and best known as a founder of metabolic control theory. Among his services to the scientific community, Reinhart was associate editor of PLoS Computational Biology. His far-reaching theoretical work on metabolism, signal transduction, and other cellular processes has made him one of the most influential forerunners of present-day systems biology. Reinhart's many talents made him appear as a modern Renaissance man. He played the violin, and published an autobiographic novel (Jenseits von Babel) and several works of lyric poetry for which he received the Brigitte Reimann Prize.
Reinhart Heinrich was born in Dresden and lived at first in the Soviet Union, growing up in Kuybyshev/Куйбышев (as Samara was then known) where his father , - a German mathematician turned aircraft constructor - had been taken after the Second World War to work. Having been educated as a theoretical physicist at Dresden University of Technology in East Germany, Reinhart conducted his postdoctoral research in the early 1970s at the Charité's Institute of Biochemistry in East Berlin. He could not fail to notice the absence of mathematical theory from cell biology as compared with other natural sciences. Enzyme kinetics was a notable exception. However, how enzymes affect the flux through a metabolic pathway was still discussed using the rather vague term rate-limiting step. Working with Professor Rapoport on mathematical models of glycolysis in red blood cells, Reinhart discovered a precise and general definition of rate limitation in metabolic pathways, for which he received in 1974 the Humboldt Prize. He extended his knowledge in this area, working over one year in Pushchino near Moscow with Professor Evgenii Selkov, who also worked on mathematic modelling of metabolic processes.
...
Wikipedia