Carl Neuberg

Carl Alexander Neuberg (1877-1956) was an early pioneer in biochemistry, and often referred to as the "Father of Biochemistry".

He was the first editor of the journal Biochemische Zeitschrift. This journal was founded in 1906 and is now known as the FEBS Journal. Neuberg was born in Hanover, Germany and studied chemistry at the University of Berlin. In his early work in Germany, he worked on solubility and transport in cells, the chemistry of carbohydrates, photochemistry, as well as investigating and classifying different types of fermentation. He was also a pioneer in the study of the chemistry of amino acids and enzymes.

Neuberg was head of the biochemistry section of one of the first Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (that of August von Wasserman). In the 1910s, after announcing the discovery of an enzyme he called "carboxylase" (which catalyzed the decarboxylation of pyruvic acid), he developed a theory of the alcoholic fermentation of glucose. Support for his theory was bolstered when he helped develop an industrial process that contributed materially to the German war effort in World War I, manufacturing glycerol&mdash;for the production of explosives&mdash;by the fermentation of sugar.

Neuberg made a particularly important discovery in 1916: hydrotropy, a solubilization process where the addition of large amounts of a second solute causes an increase in the aqueous solubility of a different solute. Due to his Jewish faith, Neuberg was forced to end his work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1936 and leave Germany by the Nazis in 1937 and moved to the United States, where he continued to work on enzymes and cell transport processes. Succesor for the position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute became Adolf Butenandt.