Buchner, Eduard

Buchner, Eduard (1860-1917), German chemist and Nobel laureate, born in Munich and educated at the University of Munich. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his discovery that the liquid obtained by crushing yeast with fine quartz sand possessed, when filtered, the same power as living yeast to cause the fermentation of sugars. This experiment proved that fermentation is the result not of physiological action within the yeast organism but of chemical action caused by a substance secreted by the yeast. This substance, discovered by Buchner in 1897, was called zymase, and chemical compounds of similar physiological origin and action are called enzymes.