Ernst Klenk

Ernst Klenk (14 October 1896, Pfalzgrafenweiler – 29 December 1971, Cologne) was a German biochemist, known as a pioneer in research on biolipids, their metabolism, and diseases caused by biolipid disorders.

Biography Klenk's father had a farm and a brewery in the Black Forest. However, Klenk did not want to take over his father's brewery and went to secondary school (Gymnasium) in Tübingen. At the University of Tübingen's Institut für Physiologische Chemie he in 1923, under the supervision of Percy Brigl (1885–1945), received his Promotion as Dr. rer. nat.; the doctoral dissertation is titled Verhalten von Dipeptiden und Elastin zu Phtalsäureanhydrid (reaction of dipeptides and elastin to phthalic anhydride). At the Institut für Physiologische Chemie Klenk was in 1923 appointed to the position of second assistant to the biochemist Hans Thierfelder (1858–1930) and in 1926 completed his habilitation and was then appointed a Privatdozent. In 1930 he was appointed a professor extraordinaries in the chair of physiological chemistry at the Institut für Physiologische Chemie, which was directed by Franz Knoop after the death of Thierfelder.

Klenk refused an offer from the University of Marburg to become the successor in the professorial chair vacated by Friedrich Kutscher (1866–1942) He established the University of Cologne's Institute for Physiological Chemistry of the Medical Faculty and headed the institute from 1937 to 1967. After WW II he was in charge of rebuilding the destroyed institute, which had been evacuated to Marburg in 1944. From 1947 to 1948 Klenk was from 1947 to 1948 of the medical faculty and from 1961 to 1962 the rector of the University of Cologne. In the early 1960s he was one of the founders of the University of Bochum. At the University of Cologne he retired as professor emeritus in 1965.

Klenk was made Doctor mediciniae honoris causa (Dr. med. h. c.) in 1948 by the University of Cologne. He received in 1953 the Normann Medaille from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fettforschung and in 1958 was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He received the American Oil Chemists' Society Award in 1958 and again in 1965. Klenk received in 1964 the inaugural Heinrich-Wieland-Preis, and, posthumously, in 1972 the Otto-Warburg-Medaille.

He was since 1937 married to Grete Aldinger (who had studied with him in Tübingen). They had three sons, Hans-Dieter Klenk, Fritz Klenk, and Wolfgang Klenk.

Selected publications Articles

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