Eduard Buchner

Eduard Buchner (1860–1917) was a German chemist who demonstrated that yeast extracts ferment sugar without intact living cells. He received the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Cell-free fermentation: Fermentation carried out by cell extracts rather than intact living cells. Buchner’s yeast-juice experiments established this phenomenon.
Zymase: Buchner’s name for the fermenting activity in yeast extracts, later understood as the action of enzymes. He used this term for the cell-free agent that fermented sugar.
Hans Buchner: A German bacteriologist and immunologist, and Eduard Buchner’s older brother. Hans’s laboratory provided an early setting for Eduard’s research on yeast.
Hans von Euler-Chelpin: A Swedish biochemist who studied enzymes and fermentation and received the 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His later work extended the enzymatic study of fermentation associated with Buchner.
Vitalism: The doctrine that living organisms possess a special force irreducible to physical and chemical processes. Buchner’s results challenged claims that fermentation required a living force.
Yeast: Single-celled fungi that metabolize sugars and are widely used in fermentation. Buchner ground yeast cells to obtain the extract used in his experiments.
Adolf von Baeyer: A German chemist who made major contributions to organic chemistry and taught Eduard Buchner. Buchner trained in Baeyer’s Munich laboratory before pursuing fermentation research.
Arthur Harden: A British biochemist who investigated alcoholic fermentation and shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Harden’s fermentation research followed the experimental path Buchner had opened.
Enzyme: A biological catalyst that accelerates chemical reactions without being consumed. His discovery helped establish enzymes as chemical agents that work outside intact cells.
Sucrose: A disaccharide sugar composed of glucose and fructose. Sugar in the extract supplied the substrate for the observed fermentation.

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