Max Birnstiel

Max Luciano Birnstiel (12 July 1933 – 15 November 2014) was a Swiss molecular biologist who held a number of positions in scientific leadership in Europe, including the chair of the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Zurich from 1972 to 1986, and that of founding director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna from 1986 to 1996. His research focused on gene regulation in eukaryotes. His research group was the first to purify single genes, the ribosomal RNA genes from Xenopus laevis in 1965. Birnstiel died in 2014 of heart failure during cancer treatment. years prior to the isolation of the bacterial lac operon, and is noted as a key piece of evidence in establishing the chemical nature of the gene. Birnstiel served as director at the IMP until 1996, when he retired and was succeeded by Kim Nasmyth. In 2013 Intercell merged with another European biotech, Vivalis, to create a successor company Valneva that focuses on vaccine development.

Awards and honors Birnstiel received numerous awards for his scientific achievements and was regarded in the 1980s as a major figure in the Swiss scientific community. In 2019, the Max Birnstiel Foundation and the IMP established the Birnstiel Award for Doctoral Research in Molecular Life Sciences, which was presented for the first time in autumn 2019.