Manfred Eigen

Manfred Eigen was born on 9 May 1927 in Germany and trained as a biophysical chemist. His early work cracked open the timing of reactions that had been too quick for instruments to catch, solving problems that had stalled physical chemistry and clarifying how chemicals behave inside living cells. The 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry followed. Later he turned toward bigger questions: how life began, how evolution works at the molecular scale. He built a multidisciplinary program at the Max Planck Institute to chase those roots, fusing chemistry with biology in what became known as evolutionary biotechnology. He died on 6 February 2019.