Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt was a German biochemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 for his "work on sex hormones." He initially rejected the award in accordance with government policy, but accepted it in 1949 after World War II. He was President of the Max Planck Society from 1960 to 1972.
Biography
Born in Lehe, near Bremerhaven, he started his studies at the University of Marburg. For his PhD he joined the working group of the Nobel laureate Adolf Windaus at the University of Göttingen and he finished his studies with a PhD in chemistry in 1927. Adolf Windaus and Walter Schöller of Schering gave him the advice to work on hormones extracted from ovaries. This research lead to the discovery of estrone and other primary female sex hormones, which were extracted from several thousand liters of urine. While working as professor in Danzig at the Chemisches Institut he was continuing his works over hormones extracting progesterone in 1934 and testosterone a year later, obtaining a substantial part of research results awarded later by Nobel Committee in 1939. For this research he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1939 together with Leopold Ružička who was involved in the synthesis of several newly discovered steroids. After his Habilitation he became lecturer in Göttingen 1931. He was professor at the Technical University of Danzig 1933–1936, and after a visit in the US, he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem beginning in 1936. In 1933 Butenandt signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State. Butenandt joined the NSDAP on 1 May 1936. As the head of a leading institute, he applied for government funding on concentrated research labeled kriegswichtig, some of which focused on military projects like the improvement of oxygen uptake for high-altitude bomber pilots. His involvement with the Nazi regime and various themes of research led to criticism after the war, and even after his death the exact nature of his political orientation during the Nazi era has never been fully resolved. When the institute moved to Tübingen in 1945 he became a professor at the University of Tübingen. In 1956, when the institute relocated to Martinsried, a suburb of Munich, Butenandt became a professor at the University of Munich. He also served as president of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science following Otto Hahn from 1960 to 1972. Butenandt is credited with the discovery and naming of the silkworm moth pheromoneBombykol in 1959. Butenandt died in Munich in 1995, at the age of 91. His wife Erika, born in 1906, died in 1995 at 88.
Honours and awards
1939: Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the identification of the sex hormones, oestrogen, progesterone and androsterone
