Neurath, founding chair of Biochemistry Department

People who knew about Dr. Hans Neurath’s interest in mountaineering suspected that he was drawn to the Pacific Northwest 50 years ago by Mt. Rainier. As it turned out, he never saw the mountain until he had lived in Seattle for six months. He had bigger tasks as the founding chairman of the UW’s Department of Biochemistry.

	Hans Neurath

As the department nears its fifth decade, and Neurath his 90th year, the first chair retains the enthusiasm for challenges that characterizes outdoorsmen and scientific leaders.

Neurath was born on Oct. 29, 1909, in Vienna, Austria, the youngest child of a pediatrician and a Red Cross volunteer. He studied at the University of Vienna, where he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1933. In 1934 he emigrated to England to do postdoctoral research at the University of London. The next year Neurath came to the United States, and held positions at the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and Duke University.

In 1950 he started the UW’s Department of Biochemistry with four faculty members and a small group of graduate students. The first labs were in converted locker rooms.

Neurath realized that biochemistry was such a fast growing field that no department could represent all areas of research. The faculty decided to concentrate on those fields to which all members of the department could relate. The early main topics were protein chemistry, signal transduction and enzymology. The general program also included biological differentiation and development, nucleic acids, plant biochemistry, lipids and physical biochemistry.

A major impetus for space expansion came with the realization that genetics and biochemistry together would embrace the then emerging concept of molecular biology. UW Department of Genetics Chair Herschel Roman and Neurath persuaded the National Institutes of Health to provide matching building funds. In 1965, the genetics and biochemistry faculties moved into the newly built J-wing of the Health Sciences Center.

Both departments grew to world-wide eminence. One dozen of the present and past faculty members of the biochemistry department have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Two faculty members, Drs. Edwin Krebs and Edmond Fischer, and one graduate student, the late Dr. Martin Rodbell, have received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Neurath is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern protein science. His research began in the era before proteins were recognized as macromolecules with defined amino acid sequences and three-dimensional structure. His work on the denaturation of proteins culminated in 1944 in a comprehensive review that is still considered a milestone in elucidating the structural changes that accompany protein unfolding.

During World War II Neurath helped improve tests for syphilis among army personnel. Later he and his colleagues turned their attention to the study of pancreatic enzymes such as trypsin, chymotrypsin and carboxypeptides.

Neurath and Earl Davie, UW professor of biochemistry, described the activation of trypsinogen. This description became a prototype for the activation other proteolytic enzymes, such as those involved in blood coagulation. A series of findings led to classifications of protein families with similar structure and mechanisms of action. This stimulated general interest in the evolution of proteins and in the organization of proteins into functional domains.

Neurath founded the journal Biochemistry, and was editor-in-chief for 30 years. At the age of 81, he founded a new journal, Protein Science, from which he retired in 1998.

Throughout his career, Neurath has held national and international advisory posts, including leadership of several National Academy of Sciences and National Institutes of Health advisory sections. He has received numerous awards and honors, and has been presented with honorary degrees from University of Geneva, the University of Tokushima (Japan) , the Medical College of Ohio, Kyoto University and the University of Montpellier (France). In 1994 he was elected a senior member of the Institute of Medicine.

With the exception of two years as scientific director of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Neurath has devoted the past 50 years to research and graduate education at the UW. He pursues those interests to this day. A pianist and downhill skier, Neurath continues to enjoy being in the mountains that some claimed brought him to Seattle in the first place. ¶

Leila Gray