Martin Karplus (born March 15, 1930) is an Austrian and American
theoretical chemist
Theoretical chemistry is the branch of chemistry which develops theoretical generalizations that are part of the theoretical arsenal of modern chemistry: for example, the concepts of chemical bonding, chemical reaction, valence, the surface ...
. He is the Director of the
Biophysical Chemistry
Biophysical chemistry is a physical science that uses the concepts of physics and physical chemistry for the study of biological systems. The most common feature of the research in this subject is to seek explanation of the various phenomena in ...
Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the
French National Center for Scientific Research and the
University of Strasbourg, France. He is also the Theodore William Richards Professor of
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
, emeritus at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
. Karplus received the 2013
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
, together with
Michael Levitt and
Arieh Warshel, for "the development of
multiscale models for complex chemical systems".
Early life
Martin Karplus was born in Vienna, Austria.
He was a child when his family fled from the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
-occupation in Austria a few days after the
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germa ...
in March 1938, spending several months in Zürich, Switzerland and La Baule, France before immigrating to the United States. Prior to their immigration to the United States, the family was known for being "an intellectual and successful secular Jewish family" in Vienna. His grandfather,
Johann Paul Karplus (1866-1936) was a highly acclaimed professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna. His great-aunt,
Eugenie Goldstern, was an ethnologist who was killed during the Holocaust.
He is the nephew, by marriage, of the sociologist, philosopher and musicologist
Theodor W. Adorno and grandnephew of the physicist
Robert von Lieben. His brother,
Robert Karplus, was an internationally recognized physicist and educator at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
. Continuing with the academic family theme, his nephew,
Andrew Karplus, is a highly respected
biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...
and
biophysics professor at
Oregon State University
Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering ...
.
Education
After earning an AB degree from
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...
in 1951,
Karplus pursued graduate studies at the
California Institute of Technology. He completed his PhD in 1953
under Nobel laureate
Linus Pauling.
According to Pauling, Karplus "was
ismost brilliant student." He was an
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
(1953–55)
where he worked with
Charles Coulson.
Teaching career
Karplus taught at the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...
(1955–60) and then
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
(1960–65) before moving to chemistry faculty at Harvard in 1966.
He was a professor at the
Louis Pasteur University
Louis Pasteur University (''Université Louis-Pasteur''), also known as Strasbourg I or ULP was a large university in Strasbourg, Alsace, France. As of 15 January 2007, there were 18,847 students enrolled at the university, including around 3, ...
in 1996 where he established a research group in Strasbourg, France, after two sabbatical visits between 1992 and 1995 in the NMR laboratory of Jean-François Lefèvre. He has supervised more than 200 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers over his career since 1955.
Research
He published his first academic paper when he was 17 years old.
Karplus has contributed to many fields in physical chemistry, including chemical dynamics,
quantum chemistry, and most notably,
molecular dynamics
Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of th ...
simulations of
biological macromolecules. He has also been influential in
nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, particularly to the understanding of
nuclear spin-spin coupling and
electron spin resonance spectroscopy. The
Karplus equation describing the correlation between
coupling constants and
dihedral angles in
proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is named after him.
In 1970 postdoctoral fellow
Arieh Warshel joined Karplus at Harvard. Together they wrote a computer program that modeled the atomic nuclei and some electrons of a molecule using classical physics and modeling other electrons using
quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
. In 1974 Karplus, Washel and other collaborators published a paper based on this type of modeling which successfully modeled the change in shape of retinal, a large complex protein molecule important to vision.
His current research is concerned primarily with the properties of molecules of biological interest. His group originated and coordinated the development of the
CHARMM program for
molecular dynamics
Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of th ...
simulations.
Books
* Martin Karplus
Spinach on the Ceiling: The Multifaceted Life of a Theoretical Chemist World Scientific Publishing, UK 2020.
*
CL Brooks III, M Karplus,
BM Pettitt. Proteins: A Theoretical Perspective of Dynamics, Structure and Thermodynamics, Volume LXXI, in: Advances in Chemical Physics, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1988.
* Martin Karplus and Richard N. Porter. Atoms and Molecules: An Introduction for Students of Physical Chemistry. W. A. Benjamin, New York 1970.
Notable students and postdocs
*
Charles L. Brooks III (
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
*
Axel T. Brünger (
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
)
*
J. Andrew McCammon
James Andrew McCammon (born 1947, Lafayette, Indiana, USA) is an American physical chemist known for his application of principles and methods from theoretical and computational chemistry to biological systems. A professor at the University of Cal ...
(
UCSD) (w/ Karplus and Gelin) published the first
MD simulation of
BPTI (see above publication)
*
P. T. Narasimhan (
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...
)
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate
*
B. Montgomery Pettitt (
University of Texas Medical Branch,
Baylor College of Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a medical school and research center in Houston, Texas, within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center. BCM is composed of four academic components: the School of Medicine, the Graduate S ...
, The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC)])
*
Benoît Roux
Benoît Roux is an Amgen Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Chicago. He has previously taught at University of Montreal and Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Benoît Roux was a recipient of the 199 ...
(
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
)
*
Andrej Šali (
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It ...
)
*
Klaus Schulten (
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...
)
*
Jeremy C. Smith (
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research an ...
)
*
David J. States (
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston)
*
Arieh Warshel (
University of Southern California) (co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Karplus and
Michael Levitt (Stanford))
Awards and honours
Karplus was elected a member of the
National Academy of Sciences in 1967. He was awarded the
Irving Langmuir Award The Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics is awarded annually, in even years by the American Chemical Society and in odd years by the American Physical Society. The award is meant to recognize and encourage outstanding interdisciplinary research ...
in 1987. He is a member of the
International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He became foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991
and was elected a
Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2000. He is a recipient of the
Christian B. Anfinsen Award, given in 2001. He was awarded the
Linus Pauling Award
The Linus Pauling Award is an award recognizing outstanding achievement in chemistry. It is awarded annually by thePuget Sound
Oregon
an
in 2004 and the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
in 2013.
Personal life
Karplus is married to Marci
and has three children.
References
External links
* including the Nobel Lecture on 8 December 2013 ''Development of Multiscale Models for Complex Chemical Systems From H+H
2 to Biomolecules''
PublicationsKarplus research group at Harvard UniversityBiophysical Chemistry Laboratory at University of StrasbourgBiography at Michigan State University websiteMartin Karplus photography websiteMartin Karplus's autobiography ''Spinach on the Ceiling: The Multifaceted Life of a Theoretical Chemist''Meet the Author: Martin Karplus, book launch of ''Spinach on the Ceiling: The Multifaceted Life of a Theoretical Chemist''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karplus, Martin
1930 births
Living people
Nobel laureates in Chemistry
American Nobel laureates
Austrian Nobel laureates
Jewish Nobel laureates
21st-century American chemists
Jewish biophysicists
American biophysicists
Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United Kingdom after the Anschluss
California Institute of Technology alumni
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Members of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science
Harvard College alumni
Harvard University faculty
Jewish American scientists
Jewish chemists
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Theoretical chemists
Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg
Columbia University faculty
University of Illinois faculty
Computational chemists