Buchner, Eduard

Eduard Buchner, (born May 20, 1860, Munich, Bavaria [Germany]—died Aug. 13, 1917, Focşani, Rom.), German biochemist who was awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for demonstrating that the fermentation of carbohydrates results from the action of different enzymes contained in yeast and not the yeast cell itself. He showed that an enzyme, zymase, can be extracted from yeast cells and that it causes sugar to break up into carbon dioxide and alcohol.

Buchner studied chemistry under Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich, received his doctorate in 1888, and held professorships at the universities of Kiel, Tübingen, Berlin, Breslau, and Würzburg. Despite lack of encouragement, he persisted in his researches with fermentation and made notable advances during 1896 and 1897. His agricultural professorship at the University of Berlin (1898) allowed him to continue his biochemical studies.

Buchner was a major in the German army when he was killed in World War I.