Manfred Eigen

Manfred Eigen (1927–2019) was a German physical chemist who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studying extremely fast chemical reactions.

Chemical relaxation: A method for measuring rapid reactions by disturbing equilibrium and tracking the system’s return toward it. Eigen’s research established how relaxation after a perturbation reveals fast reaction rates.
Ronald George Wreyford Norrish: A British chemist who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of very fast chemical reactions. Norrish shared Eigen’s Nobel recognition for complementary work on rapid reactions.
Hypercycle: A cyclic network in which self-replicating molecules catalyze one another’s replication. Eigen proposed hypercycles as a way for early molecular systems to organize and evolve.
Flash photolysis: A technique that uses a brief light pulse to create reactive species and follows their subsequent reactions. Porter’s complementary approach reached fast reactions through light-triggered intermediates rather than equilibrium jumps.
Temperature-jump method: A rapid heating technique that shifts chemical equilibrium and measures the subsequent relaxation. Eigen used temperature jumps to observe reactions on microsecond timescales.
George Porter: A British chemist who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for flash photolysis research. Porter’s complementary techniques and results formed the Nobel-winning work alongside Eigen’s.
Quasispecies model: A model of evolution in which mutation produces a distribution of related replicating sequences. Eigen used it to describe how mutation and selection shape populations of replicating molecules.
Ultrafast spectroscopy: Spectroscopic methods that track molecular changes on femtosecond-to-picosecond timescales. Later tools pushed time resolution beyond the relaxation methods central to Eigen’s early work.
Pressure-jump method: A technique that rapidly changes pressure to perturb equilibrium and measure a reaction’s relaxation. Pressure jumps let Eigen investigate fast reactions sensitive to volume changes.
Rudolf Radenhausen: A German physical chemist who supervised Manfred Eigen’s doctoral research at the University of Göttingen. Radenhausen was Eigen’s doctoral supervisor during his formative years in physical chemistry.

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