Adolf Windaus

Adolf Windaus (1876–1959) was a German chemist whose research clarified the structures of sterols and the chemical relationship between cholesterol and vitamin D. He received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Vitamin D: A group of fat-soluble secosteroids that regulate calcium and phosphate balance in the body. Windaus’s sterol studies helped identify vitamin D’s chemical relationship to cholesterol.
Sterol: A class of steroid compounds characterized by a hydroxyl group and a distinctive fused-ring structure. Sterols were the molecular family at the center of Windaus’s investigations.
University of Berlin: A historic Berlin university founded in 1810 and now known as Humboldt University of Berlin. Windaus studied chemistry there before beginning his academic career.
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus: The full personal name commonly shortened to Adolf Windaus, the German chemist and Nobel laureate. This expanded name distinguishes the Nobel laureate’s formal identity from his usual article title.
7-Dehydrocholesterol: A cholesterol-related sterol in skin that ultraviolet light converts into vitamin D₃. Windaus’s work linked this sterol to the photochemical origin of vitamin D.
Steroid: A class of lipids built around a characteristic four-ring carbon skeleton. The shared steroid framework made structural comparisons among sterols possible.
University of Freiburg: A public research university founded in Freiburg, Germany, in 1457. Windaus held a professorship there before moving to Göttingen.
Walter Norman Haworth: A British chemist who determined structures of sugars and received the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Haworth’s structural chemistry provides a parallel example of chemical methods clarifying biologically important molecules.
Cholesterol: A sterol present in animal cell membranes and used to synthesize steroid hormones and bile acids. Determining its structure was a central achievement of Windaus’s research.
Photochemistry: The study of chemical reactions initiated by the absorption of light. Ultraviolet-driven transformations of sterols helped explain vitamin D formation.

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