A PRIZE-WINNING DISCOVERY OF 1896: BUCHNER PROVIDES EVIDENCE OF CELL-FREE FERMENTATION

The discovery of cell-free fermentation by the chemist Eduard Buchner (1860-1917) is now regarded as one of the great landmarks in the development of biochemistry. Nonetheless, his appointment to the University of Tübingen in April 1896 almost failed. The Faculty of Philosophy had proposed to fill an extraordinary professorship that had recently become vacant by granting it to one of the lecturers of philosophy. Fortunately even the rectorate confirmed that a professor-ship of analytical and pharmaceutical chemistry was urgently needed, to assure a reliable and regular presentation of these subjects (gesicherte regelmäßige Vertretung dieser Fächer). After some argument the factual necessity of chemical instruction (sachlichen Bedürfnisse des chemischen Unterrichts) in the Faculty of Natural Sciences prevailed, and Professor Eduard Buchner from Kiel was finally appointed (Fig. 1) as a capable representative of these subjects (tüchtigen Vertreter für diese Fächer). As early as the summer semester of 1896, Buchner taught ana-lytical chemistry to ten students in Tübingen, and in the winter semester of 1896–1897 he was teaching pharmaceutical chemistry to 14 students and the chemistry of fermentation to 27. He was later appointed a professor in Berlin in 1898, but he had made his trail-blazing discovery shortly after he had taken up his office in Tü-bingen. In view of the earlier anxieties of the Faculty of Philosophy, it was fitting that it concerned a problem that was of the greatest interest to philosophers: the miracle of life could not be explained by the laws of physics or chemistry, because a vis vitalis was at work in th