Albrecht Kossel

He married Luise Holtzman in 1886. She was the daughter of Adolf Holtzmann, a noted philologist and Professor at the ‘University of Heidelberg’.

The couple had three children of whom son Walther (born: 1888) and daughter Gertrude (born: 1889) survived to maturity.

His son Walther Kossel was a noted physicist, who worked as a professor of Theoretical Physics and Director of ‘Physics Institute’ at the ‘University of Tübingen’. Walther Kossel was best known for the discovery of the ‘Sommerfeld–Kossel displacement law’.

He was born on September 16, 1853, in Rostock, Germany, to Albrecht Karl Ludwig Enoch Kossel and Clara Jeppe Kossel as their eldest son. His father was a Prussian consul and merchant.

He completed his secondary education at the Gymnasium at Rostock and showed great interest in botany and chemistry.

In the autumn of 1872, he joined the newly established ‘University of Strassburg’ and studied medicine there. He came under the guidance of the Head of Department of Biochemistry, Felix Hoppe-Seyle and was highly influenced by the lectures and practical lessons of the latter as also other professors such as Waldeyer, Anton de Bary, Baeyer and August Kundt.

He finished his studies in his hometown at the ‘University of Rostock’ and in 1877 cleared the German medical licence exam.

In 1877, he began working as research assistant to his former professor Felix Hoppe-Seyler at the ‘University of Strassburg’. Earlier in 1869, Friedrich Miescher, a former student of Felix Hoppe-Seyler, researched in the latter’s laboratory at the ‘University of Tübingen’, Germany, and discovered nucleins that he isolated chemically from pus cells. Miescher validated that nucleins were more acidic and phosphate-rich substances, which differed chemically from protein.

Kossel manifested that the substance called nuclein, present in the nucleus of a cell, consisted of protein and non-protein constituents. This substance contains generic information of living cells and is presently known as nucleic acid.

He made contributions to early publications of the journal ‘Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie’ (Journal of Physiological Chemistry), which was founded in 1877 by Felix Hoppe-Seyler. Following the death of Hoppe-Seyler in 1895, Kossel became the editor of the journal and remained so until his death.

He earned his degree of ‘Doctor of Medicine’ in 1878.

Kossel left Strassburg in 1883 to join the ‘University of Berlin’ as Director of the Chemistry Division of the university’s ‘Physiological Institute’, succeeding Eugen Baumann. His work was supervised by Emil du Bois-Reymond, upon whose call he joined the ‘University of Berlin’.

His research work on cell biology and his contributions in analysis of chemical composition of nucleic acids won him the ‘Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine’ on December 10, 1910.