Wuthrich, Kurt (1938-…), a Swiss chemist, won a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a way to determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins and other large molecules that are parts of living things. The prize was also awarded to the American chemist John B. Fenn and the Japanese engineer Koichi Tanaka.
The method developed by Wuthrich uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to analyze molecules. NMR is closely related to a medical technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). One advantage of Wuthrich’s method is that molecules can be analyzed while they are in a liquid solution—in the case of proteins, in their natural liquid environment in cells.
To analyze dissolved molecules, a solution is placed near a powerful magnet. The magnet enables certain atomic nuclei in each molecule to absorb radio waves. Nuclei in different sections of the molecule can absorb waves that are differently tuned.
A transmitter then sends many pulses of radio waves into the solution, with each pulse differently tuned. During each pulse, certain nuclei absorb the waves. When the transmitter shuts off at the end of the pulse, those nuclei emit (send out) radio waves that are tuned the same as the original waves. After all the pulses have been transmitted and all the emissions have occurred, an analysis of the emitted waves can reveal the molecular structure.
Kurt Wuthrich was born in Aarberg, Switzerland, on Oct. 4, 1938. He received a Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Basel in 1964. He then worked in research at Basel; and, from 1965 until 1967, at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1967, he joined the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories (then the research department of the Bell Telephone Company) in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In 1969, he became a lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. He became a professor at the institute in 1980.
