Max Bergmann

Max Bergmann (12 February 1886 – 7 November 1944) was a Jewish-German biochemist. He was the first to use the Carboxybenzyl protecting group for the synthesis of oligopeptides.

Bergmann was born in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany on February 12, 1886.

After he received his Ph.D, in 1911, he became the assistant to Hermann Emil Fischer at the University of Berlin, where he stayed until Fischer's suicide in 1919.

Bergmann was the first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research in Dresden, which was created in 1921 and upon which the Max-Planck-Institute was based. He developed the Bergmann-Zervas carbobenzoxy method for the synthesis of polypeptides.

His is considered a pioneer of applied sciences. He specialized in decoding protein and peptide structures. He also researched their synthesis.

Bergmann left Germany and his institute in the year 1933 and was active thereafter at Rockefeller University in New York City. There he was the main scientist for protein chemistry and contributed considerably to the fact that the United States reached a top position in the area of molecular biology. Two eventual Nobel Prize winners (William Howard Stein and Stanford Moore) worked in his laboratory.

Bergmann died in the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, on November 7, 1944.

In the year 2002 in Dresden, the Max Bergmann Center was created.