Hartmut Michel

Michel tied the nuptial knot with Elena Olkhova. The coupe was blessed with a daughter, Andrea, in 1981 and a son, Robert Joachim, in 1984.

Hartmut Michel was born on July 18, 1948 in Ludwigsburg, Federal Republic of Germany to Karl and Frieda Michel. He was the eldest son of the couple. His father worked as a joiner in a factory while his mother functioned as a dressmaker.

Academically brilliant, young Michel performed well at school. It was due to the influence of his mother that Michel enrolled at a high school. He spent most of his time reading books on various subjects including archaeology, ethnology, geography, zoology and so on. His favourite subjects were history, biology, chemistry and physics.

After completing obligatory services in the military, Michel applied to study biochemistry at the University of Tubingen. The course allowed him to study both his favourite subjects deeply. He was marvelled by the intricacies of biology and the reactions of chemistry. Furthermore, he took up the opportunity to work at various biochemistry labs for a year instead of taking up lab courses in Tubingen.

Michel completed the practical section of his diploma at Dieter Oesterhelt’s laboratory at the Friedrich Miescher-Laboratorium of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, working on ATPase activity of halobacteria.

After receiving his diploma in 1974, Michel worked at the Dieter Oesterhelt’s laboratory. The following year, the laboratory shifted to Wurzburg.

After completing his PhD, Michel continued his research at the Oesterhelt's laboratory. Initially, he tried to fuse delipidated bacteriorhodopsin with bacterial vesicles in order to achieve light-driven amino acid uptake. He stored the delipidated bacteriorhodopsin in freezer which led to generation of solid, glass-like aggregates. The residue convinced him of the possibility of crystalize membrane proteins.

It was in 1979 that Michel observed the first real three-dimensional crystals of bacteriorhodopsin after much effort. The success led him to cancel his plans of taking up post-doctoral studies on sexual differentiation in mammals at Susumu Ohno, Duarte, California.

Together with Dieter Oesterhelt, Michel moved to Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie at Martinsried near Munich, where he took up the position of a department head and director. The move was a well thought one as Michel hoped to collaborate with Robert Huber and his colleagues, who had established a very productive department for X-ray crystallographic protein structure analysis at the Max-Planck-Institut.

In 1980, for four months, Michel worked at the MRC in Cambridge, England, together with Richard Henderson, performing X-ray experiments. The period was crucial as he worked on improving the crystallization method.

After several failed attempts, Michel finally found success in 1981 when he obtained the first crystals of the photosynthetic reaction centre from the purple bacterium Rhodopseudomonas viridis. In September same year, the first reaction centre crystal was X-rayed which turned out to be of excellent quality.

Hartmut Michel collaborated with Robert Huber and Johann Deisenhofer to work on one of the most fundamental process of life called photosynthesis. The trio determined the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre. It IS known to play a crucial role in initiating a simple type of photosynthesis.