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Ernst Klenk
German biochemist, born October 14, 1896, Pfalzgrafenweiler; died December 29, 1971, Köln.
Associated eponyms:
Refsum's disease
A rare disorder characterized by phytanic acid accumulation in the blood and tissues.
Biography:
Ernst Klenk was born in Pfalzgrafenweiler, a village near Freudenstadt in the Black Forest. He was the son of a brewer and grew up in a happy family. His teacher in the elementary school in his home village inspired his father to give him a good education, so he left home at the age of 8. Even at that young age he had decided not to take over the brewery but to study. At school he was not very fond of languages but was extremely brilliant in mathematics. The schoolboys admired his dangerous experiments with rockets and montgolfieres.
Upon graduation from high school in Tübingen, and the outbreak of World War I, he entered the army and served as a mountaineer from 1914 to January 1919 in the Vogesen, the Dolomites, the Carpates and the mountains of the Balkan. Since that time he enjoyed the mountains and spent all of his vacations there in summer as well as in winter.
After the war Klenk went to the University in Tübingen to study chemistry. It happened in one of his last terms that he could not get a laboratory space at the Institute of Chemistry, so he moved into the Institute of Physiological Chemistry of which Geheimrat Hans Thierfelder (1858-1930) was in charge. The latter was very kind to him and took much interest in his studies. He wrote his thesis under the supervision of Percy Brigl (1885-1945). Before he had finished his thesis work, Thierfelder had made him an assistant. Although Klenk nearly refused in the beginning, Thierfelder encouraged, almost pushed him, to take the academic career.
Klenk obtained his doctorate in 1923. Three years later he was habilitated and in 1930 he was appointed to a chair in physiological chemistry. After Thierfelder's death he went on working at the same institute under Franz Knoop (1875-1946), the discoverer of B-oxidation of fatty acids. There one of Klenk’sstudents was his future wife Greta. They married in 1937 and had three sons.
In 1933 Ernst Klenk joined the Nazi party NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) and in 1934 the SA (Sturmabteilung – the Assault Section, also known as the Brownshirts). In 1936, Klenk was called to the University of Cologne as full professor of physiological chemistry at the medical faculty. During World War II the institute was bombed several times and by the end of 1944 it had become impossible to stay in Cologne. The institute was evacuated, first to Eifel and then to Amöneburg, a suburb to Marburg.
In the fall of 1945, Klenk returned to Cologne and again started to rebuild his Institute a fourth or fifth time under the greatest of difficulties and with the help of the Marshall Plan. Although the building looked rather poor from the, the team working inside was always like a family. This family enlarged considerably in the course of the years. The laboratories became too small. In 1959 they moved into a fine modern building with very good working facilities.
In 1948 Klenk became dean of the medical faculty and the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree by this faculty. In 1962 he was elected president of the University of Cologne. He was awarded the Norman medal of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fettforschung and the Heinrieh-Wieland-Preis. He was a member of the "Leopoldina" der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforseher and a member in honour of the American Society of Biological Chemistry.
We thank André Trombeta for information submitted.
Bibliography:
- E. Klenk and G. J. Krämer:
[Studies on the metabolism of phytol, dihydrophytol and phytanic acic].
Hoppe-Seylers Zeitschrift für physiologische Chemie, Berlin, 1965, 343: 39-51.
Biographical etc:
- E. Klenk and G. J. Krämer:
[Studies on the metabolism of phytol, dihydrophytol and phytanic acic].
Hoppe-Seylers Zeitschrift für physiologische Chemie, Berlin, 1965, 343: 39-51.
- Grete Klenk
Biography of Ernst Klenk scientific achievements.
Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, Berlin / Heidelberg, February 1966, 43 (2): a48-a78.
Dr. med. Grete Klenk was the wife of Ernst Klenk.
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