Dieter Oesterhelt

Dieter Oesterhelt (10 November 1940 – 28 November 2022) was a German biochemist.

Oesterhelt studied chemistry at the University of Munich from 1959 to 1963.

From 1964 to 1967 he worked at the Institute of Biochemistry at the same university under Feodor Lynen.

He was then a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Chemistry until 1969.

From 1969 to 1973 he worked as an academic adviser at the Institute for Biochemistry at the University of Munich and carried out work on the structure, function and biosynthesis of the purple membrane of Halobacterium salinarum.

In 1969, Oesterhelt went to the University of California at San Francisco, where he joined the lab of Walther Stoeckenius to study the cell membrane of Halobacterium salinarum.

He proved that retinaldehyde was contained in a protein of the so-called "purple membrane" of Halobacterium.

This protein was isolated and called bacteriorhodopsin.

After returned to Germany, Oesterhelt showed that physiological function of bacteriorhodopsin is to pump protons out of the cell.

Members of his department at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry researched the structure-function relationships of membrane proteins and other microbial rhodopsins such as halorhodopsin, which later became a molecular tool in optogenetics.

In 2021 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.

Oesterhelt died on 28 November 2022, at the age of 82.

In 1975 he became a junior research group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory in Tübingen.

From 1976 to 1979 he was a full professor at the University of Würzburg.

From 1980 until 2008, he was director of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried.

Oesterhelt has been a member of the Max Planck Society and director of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, since 1980.

He retired in 2008.