Friedrich Miescher

Johannes Friedrich Miescher (13 August 1844 – 26 August 1895) was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first scientist to isolate nucleic acid in 1869. Miescher also identified protamine and made several other discoveries.

Miescher had isolated various phosphate-rich chemicals, which he called nuclein (now nucleic acids), from the nuclei of white blood cells in Felix Hoppe-Seyler's laboratory at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and even posited that there might be something akin to an alphabet that might explain how variation is produced.

Early life and education Friedrich Miescher came from a scientific family and was the oldest of 5 sons, and was known within his family as Fritz. Miescher's father and his uncle held the chair of anatomy at the University of Basel until Miescher's father resigned in 1850. Miescher found that this contained phosphorus and nitrogen, but not sulfur. Hoppe-Seyler repeated all of Miescher's research himself before publishing it in his journal because one of his earlier student's false claims. It later found use, as protamine sulfate, in the stabilization of insulin (NPH insulin) and also as a reversal agent for the anticoagulant medicine heparin.

Miescher and his students researched much nucleic acid chemistry, but its function remained unknown. However, Miescher's discovery played an important part in the identification of nucleic acids as the carriers of inheritance. The importance of his discovery was not apparent until Albrecht Kossel (a German physiologist specializing in the physiological chemistry of the cell and its nucleus and of proteins) researched the chemical structure of nuclein. Miescher was married to Maria Anna Rüsch on March 21, 1878. According to Miescher's own student Fritz Suter, Miescher missed his own wedding and was found in his laboratory. Miescher had 3 children with Rüsch all of which died at a young age. The Miescher family moved to their home on 21 Augustinergasse sometime after 1878 and before 1887. An award was also named after Miescher called the "Friedrich Miescher award", given to young biochemists for outstanding scientific work either carried out in Switzerland or by a Swiss scientist.