Chemistry Labs

Photo credit: Markus Pössel — File:Robert-huber.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 3.0

Robert Huber

born 1937 · Germany · 20th century

Nobel Chemistry 1988

German biochemist who solved the first atomic-resolution structure of a membrane protein: the photosynthetic reaction centre.

Nobel Prize work

With Johann Deisenhofer and Hartmut Michel, Huber determined the three-dimensional structure of the photosynthetic reaction centre of a purple bacterium by X-ray crystallography — the first membrane protein complex ever solved at atomic resolution. The structure revealed how chlorophylls and cofactors are arranged to convert light into separated electric charges.

Fields

Physical chemistryBiochemistry and biomedical chemistry

Related topics

Protein structure and function

A protein is a sequence that folds into a shape; its surface and flexibility help determine what it can bind or catalyse.

Cryo-EM, protein crystallography

Structural biologists infer molecular architecture from scattered electrons or X-ray diffraction, with distinct sample preparation and data-processing limits.

Artificial photosynthesis

How light absorbers, catalysts and membranes can convert sunlight into hydrogen or carbon-based fuels, and why efficiency, stability and scale-up remain challenging.

Chemists in the same field

Avram Hershko (1937)Gerhard Ertl (1936)Yuan T. Lee (1936)Kurt Wüthrich (1938)Tomas Lindahl (1938)Ada E. Yonath (1939)