Eduard Buchner was born in Munich, Germany on May 20, 1860, the same year Louis Pasteur performed his work on fermentation. Buchner's father died when Eduard was 12. His brother Hans, who became a famous bacteriologist, oversaw the boy's education. Following Army service, Eduard entered Munich Technical University to study chemistry. He was forced to withdraw because of financial hardship, and went to work in canning factories for four years. While there, he developed an interest in the fermentation process in which yeast breaks down sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
When his brother Hans was once again able to provide support, Eduard resumed his studies in 1884 and soon received a scholarship. Buchner studied chemistry under Adolf von Baeyer and as well as botany at Munich. Under his brother's guidance, he began a systematic study of alcoholic fermentation which led to Eduard's first published paper in 1885. In his paper, Buchner revealed that fermentation could occur in the presence of oxygen, a conclusion contrary to the current prevailing view held by Louis Pasteur. In 1888 Eduard received his doctorate in chemistry and became Baeyer's assistant. With Baeyer's funding, Buchner set up a laboratory to continue research into fermentation.
By 1893 Buchner's was fully involved in seeking the active agent of fermentation. At that time there were two competing theories on fermentation. The vitalist theory, held by Louis Pasteur, held that living cells contained a " vital substance," an unidentified yet necessary component of living cells that was responsible for fermentation. The vitalists believed chemicals alone could not produce fermentation. The other view, the mechanistic theory, stated that yeast, continually decomposing in a liquid, set up chemical stresses that broke down sugar molecules making fermentation a complex, but otherwise normal, chemical reaction.
With the encouragement of his brother Hans, Eduard sought the active agent in fermentation. He obtained pure samples of the inner fluid of yeast cells by pulverizing yeast with a mixture of sand and diatomaceous earth, then squeezing the mixture through a canvas filter. This process avoided the destructive method of using solvents and high temperatures which had foiled previous investigations. Buchner and his assistant assumed the collected fluid was incapable of producing fermentation because the yeast cells were dead. However, when they attempted to preserve the fluid in concentrated sucrose (sugar), they were startled to observe carbon dioxide being released, a sign that fermentation was taking place. Buchner hypothesized that the fermentation was caused by an enzyme which he named zymase. His astonishing findings--that fermentation was the result of chemical processes both inside and outside cells--were published in 1897. Buchner received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1907. His work demonstrated that many chemical processes which occur in cells are under the regulation of enzymes, leading the way for other researchers to study the processes of biochemistry. Buchner died from wounds sustained while serving at a field hospital during the first World War.
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