Felix Haurowitz

Felix Michael Haurowitz(March 1, 1896,Prague– December 2, 1987,Bloomington, Indiana) was a Czech-American physician and biochemist.

Biography

Haurowitz spoke German as his native language but also spoke fluent Czech from early childhood. During his secondary education in aGymnasiumin Prague, he also took private lessons in English, French, and Italian. In November 1915 he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and assigned to an Austrian artillery unit. Based upon his outstanding performance in an officers' school in Hungary, he was given command of an artillerybattalion.In April 1918 he was granted leave to enroll in the medical school of theGerman University in Prague(which is nowCharles University). There he worked under the supervision of thehemoglobinchemist Richard von Zeynek (1869–1945) andHedwig Langecker.Haurowitz spent a semester at theUniversity of Wurzburg,where he met the protein chemistFranz Hofmeister.In Prague, Haurowitz graduated in 1922 with an M.D. degree and in 1923 was awarded theDr. rer. nat.(D.Sc.) for several papers published between 1920 and 1923. He visitedLeonor Michaelis's laboratory in Berlin, where he learned physicochemical methods, such as pH measurement, from the biochemist Peter Rona (1871–1945). During the summer of 1924 Haurowitz worked on the purification ofgastric lipasein the Munich laboratory ofRichard Willstätter.In 1925 Haurowitz was appointed a docent in Prague and this gave him the financial security to marry Regina "Gina" Hedvika Perutz (1903–1983) in June 1925. She was a cousin ofMax Perutz.On a visit to Felix and Gina Haurowitz, Perutz became interested in the problem of determining the chemical structure of hemoglobin.

In Prague, Haurowitz introduced courses on biophysical chemistry and recent advances in biochemistry.In 1930 he was appointedprofessor extraordinarius(associate professor) with tenure. From 1925 to 1936 he gained an international reputation for his research on hemoglobin. He determined methemoglobin'sabsorption spectraand was the first to crystallize several derivatives of hemoglobin.He was among the first researchers to provide convincing evidence that antibodies areserum globulins.In 1938 he made the important discover that exposure to oxygen can shatter deoxygenated crystals of hemoglobin.Karl Landsteinerpioneered the use ofhaptensfor research inimmunochemistry.Landsteiner's techniques were developed by Haurowitz for "quantitative determination of the composition of the antigen-antibody precipitate, calculation ofdissociation constants,and other parameters of the antibody-antigen interaction. "

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Felix Haurowitz and Friedrich Breinl (1888–1936), as well as other scientists includingJerome Alexander,Stuart Mudd,William Whiteman Carlton Topley,and, most notably,Linus Pauling,proposed variants of the now-discredited template theory of antibody formation.

In 1938 Haurowitz was working at Copenhagen'sCarlsberg Laboratoryat the invitation of the Danish biochemist Albert Fischer, when theMunich Agreementwas made. Haurowitz was alarmed by the news, and returned to Prague to be with his wife and their two children. He was briefly mobilized as an M.D. in the Czech army but was demobilized when Czechoslovakia ceded theSudetenlandto Germany. He with his wife and their two children fled toIstanbul.AtIstanbul University,he headed the department of biological chemistry and was a professor from 1939 to 1948. By the end of his second year at Istanbul University, he lectured and gave examinations in Turkish.While in Istanbul, he served as a conduit for many people under Nazi-occupation and their contacts inAlliedcountries.

In 1946 Gina Haurowitz with the children, Alice (born 1929) and Martin (born 1931), moved to the United States. However, Felix Haurowitz spent two more years at Istanbul University o fulfill his academic contract, but he did visit his family in 1947. He emigrated in 1948 to the United States and in 1952 became a naturalized citizen. AtIndiana Universityhe was a professor of chemistry from 1948 to 1966, when he retired as professor emeritus. He was the author of 11 books and was the author or coauthor of about 350 scientific papers. At Indiana University he was a close friend ofHarry G. Day.

Awards and honors

• 1956 – Member of theGerman National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
• 1960 –Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize
• 1970 – Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1971 — Award for Distinguished Services to Immunology, given by theInternational Union of Immunological Societiesat the First International Congress of Immunology, Washington, D.C.
• 1973 – Doctor of Medicine (honorary) from the University of Istanbul
• 1974 – Doctor of Philosophy (honorary) from Indiana University
• 1975 – Member of theNational Academy of Sciences

Selected publications

Articles

• Haurowitz, Felix; Astrup, Tage (1939). "Ultra-violet Absorption of Genuine and Hydrolysed Protein".Nature.143(3612): 118–119.Bibcode:1939Natur.143..118H.doi:10.1038/143118b0.S2CID4078416.
• Haurowitz, F.; Crampton, C. F. (1952)."The fate in rabbits of intravenously injected I¹³¹-iodoovalbumin ".The Journal of Immunology.68(1): 73–85.doi:10.4049/jimmunol.68.1.73.PMID14908086.S2CID43864957.
• Würz, Hannelore; Haurowitz, Felix (1961). "Changes in the Optical Rotation of Proteins after Cleavage of the Disulfide Bonds1,2".Journal of the American Chemical Society.83(2): 280–283.doi:10.1021/ja01463a005.

Books

• Biochemie des Menschen und der Tiere seit 1914(1925)
• Fortschritte der Biochemie(1932)
• Chemistry and Biology of Proteins(1949); pbk edition 1963ASINB000R0BU8Y
• Immunochemistry and the Biosynthesis of Antibodies(1950)
• Biochemistry: an Introductory Textbook.New York: J. Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1955.ASINB00JCVDKM8
• Progress in Biochemistry since 1949.S. Karger. 1958.ISBN978-3805508711;pbk, 358 pages{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: postscript (link)

External links

• "Haurowitz mss., 1920-1985".Online Archives at Indiana University.
• Literature by and about Felix Haurowitzin theGerman National Librarycatalogue
• Alois Kernbauer:Felix Haurowitz und Zdenko Stary. Zwei aus Altösterreich stammende Biochemiker von Weltrang und deren Wirken an der deutschen Universität in Prag, in der Türkei und in den USA.In:Türk Tip Tarihi Yilligi. Acta Turcica Historiae Medicinae IV: Verhandlungen des Symposions über die Universitätsreform von Atatürk und die Medizin zu dieser Zeit. 25. Oktober 1996.edited Arslan Terzioglu & Erwin Lucius, Istanbul 1997, pp. 59–67.
• Erinnerungsbild Felix Haurowitz. Die Proteine und Immunglobuline des Bluts,by Lothar Jaenicke, in: Biospektrum (Zeitschrift), H. 3, 2005,ISSN0947-0867pp. 312–316
• Obituary inNew York Times
• "Felix Haurowitz".Chemistry Tree.