Albrecht Kossel

Albrecht Kossel (16 September 1853 to 5 July 1927) was a German biochemist and a pioneer in the study of genetics. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1910 for determining the chemical composition of nucleic acids. Working from the substance called nuclein, he separated its protein part from its non-protein part and between 1885 and 1901 isolated and named the five nucleobases adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine and uracil. He also discovered histidine in 1896, was first to isolate theophylline, studied the composition of proteins, protamines and histones, and discovered agmatine in herring roe. He studied medicine at Strassburg under Felix Hoppe-Seyler, became a professor at Marburg in 1895 and director of the Heidelberg Institute for Protein Investigation in 1901, and edited the Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie from 1895 until his death. His students included Henry Drysdale Dakin, Edwin B. Hart and Otto Folin, and the Albrecht Kossel Institute for Neuroregeneration at the University of Rostock is named in his honor.