Zacharias Dische
| Born: |
02-18-1895 |
| Faculty: |
Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: |
Expelled teacher |
Zacharias DISCHE (born on February 18th, 1895 in Sambor/Galicia, died on January 17th, 1988 in New York City) first enrolled at the Medical School of the University of Lemberg [Lwiw/Ukraine] in 1913 and graduated – after serving in the Austrian-Hungarian Army for two years – in 1921 at the Medical School at the University of Vienna with the academic degree 'Dr. med.'.
From 1924 on he devoted himself to research on intermediary metabolism of blood cells at the University of Vienna and developed simple methods for determining the amount of sugars present in tissues, e.g. the "Dische-reaction", a color reaction of desoxypentose with diphenylamine. In 1931 Dische became assistant professor at the physiological Department (head: Arnold Durig) at the Philosophical School of the University of Vienna and head of the chemical laboratory at this department.
He was persecuted in times of Nazism as a Jew, lost his position and was thrown out of the university in 1938. His mother, his sister and his grandmother were killed in concentration camps.
Zacharias Dische was able to emigrate to France and worked temporarily in Paris and – from 1940 on – at the Department of Medical Chemistry at the University of Marseille. There he made a very important discovery - that of feedback inhibition in metabolism - which is usually ascribed to two groups in the USA (Umbarger on the one hand and Yates and Pardee on the other) who described it 16 years later. Dische's paper (Bull. Soc. Chim. Biol. 23, 1140-1148 (1940)), published in French in wartime, is almost totally unknown, and is not listed by Web of Knowledge (information from Prof. em. Athel Cornish-Bowden).
In 1941 he emigrated further on to the USA and worked as a research fellow (1947 research associate) at the biochemistry department at the Columbia University (College of Physicians and Surgeons). He was appointed assistant professor in 1948, associated professor in 1952, full professor in 1957 and emeritus professor und lecturer in 1963. From 1948 on he also was head of the chemical research department at the institute of ophthalmology.
In 1965 Dische was awarded the Proctor Medal of the Association for Research in Ophthalmology. His daughter, author and journalist Irene Dische, published a documentary titled "Zacharias" about him in 1986. The departments of ophthalmology and biochemistry and molecular biophysics have sponsored a "Zacharias Dische Memorial Lecture" honoring Disches scientific work.
Lit.: information of Robert Rosner, 2011; ROSNER 2011 (pdf); JAENICKE 2009; Obituary/New York Times 1988; SMELSER 1965; information of Prof. em. Athel Cornish-Bowden, Directeur de Recherche (Émérite), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseilles, France, 2016.
Katharina Kniefacz
