The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1939
Awarded on: 1939-11-09
"for his work on sex hormones"
Affiliations:
- Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (now Max-Planck-Institut) für Biochemie – Berlin-Dahlem, Germany
- Berlin University – Berlin, Germany
Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt
Born: 1903-03-24 in Bremerhaven-Lehe, Germany
Gender: male
Field: German biochemist (1903–1995)
Biography
Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt was a German biochemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 for his "work on sex hormones." He initially rejected the award in accordance with government policy, but accepted it in 1949 after World War II. He was President of the Max Planck Society from 1960 to 1972. He was also the first, in 1959, to discover the structure of the sex pheromone of silkworms, which he named bombykol.