Johann Deisenhofer

He met his future wife, Kirsten Fischer Lindahl at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the two got married in 1989.

Johann Deisenhofer was born on September 30, 1943 in Zusamaltheim, Bavaria, Germany to Thekla and Johann Deisenhofer. He has a younger sister, Antonie.

Upon returning from military service, senior Deisenhofer took to working at the family farm. He expected his son to tread on the same path but young Deisenhofer was interested in academics. He entered elementary school in 1949.

In 1956, he was sent to a series of boarding schools wherein he gained his higher education. Subsequently, he enrolled at the Augsburg's Holbein Gymnasium, graduating from the same in 1963.

Upon graduating, Deisenhofer attempted Germany’s qualifying examination. He secured a state scholarship that allowed him to attend the Technical University in Munich. However, to gain admission, he had to fulfill the requirement of a year and half of military service.

Following his military service, Deisenhofer began his studies at the University. Ever since a boy, he was fascinated by the astronomical problems and the physical world. As such, he dedicated his university study on the subject.

Upon completing his PhD from Max Planck Institute, he took up the post of a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute offered to him by Huber. He worked as a research scientist alongside Huber, making advances in the applications for X-ray crystallography.

Apart from lab work, he designed computer programs that could process the data obtained from the X-ray techniques and produce a map of the atomic structure of the substance in question.

In 1976, Deisenhofer was appointed as a staff scientist at the Institute. Together with Peter M. Colman and Walter Palm, he started working on the human myeloma protein Kol. He collaborated with Huber to work on Peter Colman's work on the human Fc-fragment, and its complex with an Fc-binding fragment from protein A from Staphylococcus aureus. It was in 1980 that the refinement of these structures was finished.

Deisenhofer got involved in a variety of projects at Huber’s laboratory including human C3a, citrate synthase, and alpha-1 -proteinase inhibitor. Furthermore, he continued with his fascination for computers, developing and maintaining crystallographic software.

In 1979, German biophysicist Hartmut Michel joined Huber’s laboratory. Michel was engaged in the ongoing study of photosynthesis in the hopes of finding a way to obtain a thorough analysis of the molecules involved in the complex chemical-reaction process.

When Hartmut Michel, who had successfully achieved the first crystallisation of a membrane protein complex, expressed his desire to carry out an X-ray structure analysis of the crystal, it was Deisenhofer who came to help him. Deisenhofer used X-rays to examine the crystal that Michel had grown. After meticulous studies, he finally determined the three-dimensional structure of the photosynthetic reaction center in 1985. The research was crucial as it increased the general understanding of the mechanisms of photosynthesis and revealed similarities between the photosynthetic processes of plants and bacteria.