Martin Karplus

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Martin Karplus
Nobel Prize Laureate Martin Karplus during press conference in Stockholm, December 2013
Born(1930-03-15)March 15, 1930
Vienna, Austria[2]
DiedDecember 28, 2024(2024-12-28) (aged 94)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
CitizenshipAmerican, Austrian[2]
Education
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical chemistry
Institutions
ThesisA quantum-mechanical discussion of the bifluoride ion (1954)
Doctoral advisorLinus Pauling[2]
Websitewww.chemistry.harvard.edu/people/martin-karplus

Martin Karplus (German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈkaʁplʊs]; March 15, 1930 – December 28, 2024) was an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He was the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He was also the director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Strasbourg, France. Karplus received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Early life

Martin Karplus was born on March 15, 1930, in Vienna, Austria.[8][9] He was a child when his family fled from the Nazi-occupation in Austria a few days after the Anschluss in March 1938, spending several months in Zürich, Switzerland and La Baule, France before immigrating to the United States.[10] Prior to their immigration to the United States, the family was known for being "an intellectual and successful secular Jewish family" in Vienna.[11] His grandfather, Johann Paul Karplus (1866–1936) was a highly acclaimed professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna.[12] His great-aunt, Eugenie Goldstern, was an ethnologist who was killed during the Holocaust.[13] He was the nephew, by marriage, of the sociologist, philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno and grandnephew of the physicist Robert von Lieben. His brother, Robert Karplus, was an internationally recognized physicist and educator at University of California, Berkeley. Continuing with the academic family theme, his nephew, Andrew Karplus, is a biochemistry and biophysics professor at Oregon State University.[14]

Education

After earning an AB degree in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College in 1951,[15] Karplus pursued graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology. He completed his PhD in 1953[16] under Nobel laureate Linus Pauling.[17] According to Pauling, Karplus "was most brilliant student."[18] He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (1953–55)[16] where he worked with Charles Coulson.[15]

Teaching career

Karplus taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1955–60) and then Columbia University (1960–65) before moving to join the Chemistry Department faculty at Harvard in 1966.[8][16]

He was a professor at the Louis Pasteur University in 1996 where he established a research group in Strasbourg, France, after two sabbatical visits between 1992 and 1995 in the NMR laboratory of Jean-François Lefèvre. He has supervised more than 200 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers over his career since 1955.[19]

Personal life and death

Karplus was married to Marci[15] and had three children.[8] He died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 28, 2024, at the age of 94.[20][21]

Research

Karplus published his first academic paper when he was 17 years old.[15] Karplus contributed to many fields in physical chemistry, including chemical dynamics, quantum chemistry, and most notably, molecular dynamics simulations of biological macromolecules. He has also been influential in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, particularly to the understanding of nuclear spin-spin coupling and electron spin resonance spectroscopy. The Karplus equation describing the correlation between coupling constants and dihedral angles in proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is named after him.[22]

From 1969 to 1970, Karplus visited the Structural Studies Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.[23]

In 1970 postdoctoral fellow Arieh Warshel joined Karplus at Harvard. Together they wrote a computer program that modeled the atomic nuclei and some electrons of a molecule using classical physics and modeling other electrons using quantum mechanics. In 1974 Karplus, Warshel and other collaborators published a paper based on this type of modeling, which successfully modeled the change in shape of retinal, a large complex protein molecule important to vision.[16]

His research was concerned primarily with the properties of molecules of biological interest. His group originated and coordinated the development of the CHARMM program for molecular dynamics simulations.[24]

Books

  • Karplus, Martin (2020). Spinach on the Ceiling: The Multifaceted Life of a Theoretical Chemist. WORLD SCIENTIFIC (EUROPE). doi:10.1142/q0238. ISBN 978-1-78634-802-9.
  • Brooks, Charles L.; Karplus, Martin; Pettitt, B. Montgomery (November 16, 1988). Advances in Chemical Physics, Volume 71. New York: Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 978-0-471-62801-9.
  • Karplus, Martin; Porter, Richard N. (1970). Atoms and Molecules: An Introduction for Students of Physical Chemistry. New York: W. A. Benjamin. ISBN 978-0-8053-5218-4.

Notable students and postdocs

Source:[25]

Awards and honours

Karplus was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1967.[30] He was awarded the Irving Langmuir Award in 1987.[31] He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991[32] and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2000.[33] He is a recipient of the Christian B. Anfinsen Award, given in 2001. He was awarded the Linus Pauling Award in 2004 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Martin Karplus". Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University. May 13, 2024. Archived from the original on July 22, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013" (Press release). Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. October 9, 2013. Archived from the original on December 24, 2018. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  3. ^ Chang, Kenneth (October 9, 2013). "3 Researchers Win Nobel Prize in Chemistry". New York Times. Archived from the original on December 24, 2018. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  4. ^ Fersht, A. R. (2013). "Profile of Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel, 2013 nobel laureates in chemistry". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 110 (49): 19656–7. Bibcode:2013PNAS..11019656F. doi:10.1073/pnas.1320569110. PMC 3856823. PMID 24277833.
  5. ^ Hodak, Hélène (2014). "The Nobel Prize in chemistry 2013 for the development of multiscale models of complex chemical systems: A tribute to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel". Journal of Molecular Biology. 426 (1): 1–3. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2013.10.037. PMID 24184197.
  6. ^ Van Noorden, R. (2013). "Computer modellers secure chemistry Nobels". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13903. S2CID 211729791.
  7. ^ Van Noorden, Richard (2013). "Modellers react to chemistry award: Nobel Prize proves that theorists can measure up to experimenters". Nature. 502 (7471): 280. Bibcode:2013Natur.502..280V. doi:10.1038/502280a. PMID 24132265.
  8. ^ a b c "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013". NobelPrize.org. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  9. ^ Richter, Hannes (August 16, 2024). "Nobel Laureate Martin Karplus Receives Highest Austrian Decoration". Austria in USA. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  10. ^ a b Karplus, Martin (June 1, 2006). "SPINACH ON THE CEILING: A Theoretical Chemist's Return to Biology". Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure. 35 (1): 1–47. doi:10.1146/annurev.biophys.33.110502.133350. ISSN 1056-8700. PMID 16689626.
  11. ^ Fuller, Robert (2002). A Love of Discovery: Science Education – The Second Career of Robert Karplus. New York: Kluwer Academic. p. 293. ISBN 978-0-306-46687-8.
  12. ^ Gaugusch, Georg (2011). Wer einmal war: Das jüdische Großbürgertum Wiens 1800–1938 A-K. Wien: Amalthea Signum. pp. 1358–1367. ISBN 978-3-85002-750-2. Archived from the original on November 1, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2013.
  13. ^ Ireland, Corydon (June 3, 2015). "Karplus on film". The Harvard Gazette. Archived from the original on March 26, 2019. Retrieved March 26, 2019.
  14. ^ "College of Science". Oregan State. February 9, 2024. Archived from the original on August 4, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  15. ^ a b c d "Harvard's Martin Karplus looks back on path to Nobel Prize". Harvard Gazette. April 21, 2017. Archived from the original on January 16, 2021. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  16. ^ a b c d "Martin Karplus | American-Austrian chemist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  17. ^ Karplus, Martin (1954). A quantum-mechanical discussion of the bifluoride ion (PhD thesis). California Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved May 8, 2015.
  18. ^ "Harvard professor wins Nobel in chemistry". October 9, 2013. Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2019.
  19. ^ "Martin Karplus". Austria in USA. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  20. ^ "The Multifaceted Life of a Nobel Prize Winning Theoretical Chemist". Andrew J. Magni & Son Funeral Home. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  21. ^ "Martin Karplus". Legacy. January 3, 2025. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  22. ^ "C&EN: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY". pubsapp.acs.org. Archived from the original on June 19, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  23. ^ pmabbs (October 9, 2013). "LMB Alumni awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 2013". MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Archived from the original on July 14, 2023. Retrieved July 14, 2023.
  24. ^ "Martin Karplus". CHARMM. Archived from the original on August 20, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  25. ^ "Martin Karplus". Chemistry Tree. July 24, 2011. Archived from the original on November 30, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  26. ^ "University of Michigan". Brooks Lab. Archived from the original on July 22, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  27. ^ Mossman, Kaspar (August 5, 2008). "Profile of Axel Brunger". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (31): 10643–10645. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10510643M. doi:10.1073/pnas.0806286105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2504785. PMID 18667701.
  28. ^ McCammon, J. Andrew (August 25, 2016). "Autobiography of J. Andrew McCammon". The Journal of Physical Chemistry B. 120 (33): 8057–8060. doi:10.1021/acs.jpcb.6b00834. ISSN 1520-6106. PMID 27558539.
  29. ^ "B. Montgomery Pettitt". Chemistry Tree. July 31, 2015. Archived from the original on December 6, 2023. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  30. ^ "Martin Karplus". www.nasonline.org. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  31. ^ "Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics". American Chemical Society. Archived from the original on September 12, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
  32. ^ "M. Karplus". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on March 26, 2019. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  33. ^ "Martin Karplus". Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Archived from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
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