Birnstiel, Max Luciano

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Person

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Birnstiel, Max Luciano

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        Dates of existence

        1933-07-12/2014-11-15

        History

        Birnstiel was born to a Swiss father and a Brazilian mother in Brazil on 1933-07-1. His family moved to Zurich, CH, when he was 5.
        Between 1952 and 1959, we attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). There, he studied botany under the supervision of Albert Frey-Wyssling. His doctoral thesis, awarded in 1960, was entitled: "Über das Redoxpotential lebender und absterbender Pflanzengewebe (Tabakverbräunung)" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-000150890).
        Between 1960 and 1963, he carried out a postdoc with Professor James Bonne at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, US. Following this, he moved to the University of Edinburgh in the Epigenetics Research Group in the Genetics Department, having been recruited by Conrad Waddington. By the time be left Edinburgh in 1972, Birnstiel had become a professor.
        In 1972, the University of Zürich offered Birnstiel a position in the university's Institute of Molecular Biology II. (The Institute of Molecular Biology I was, at this time, headed by Charles Weissmann.) Birnstiel would stay at the institute for 14 years before moving to Vienna, AT, in 1986. There, he was the founding Director of the Boehringer Institute of Molecular Pathology. He left the Institute in 1996 to return to Switzeland, where died of complications of cancer in 2014.

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        Zürich, CH
        Pasadena, US
        Edinburgh, GB
        Vienna, AT

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        Functions, occupations and activities

        Among many positions on international committees, Birnstiel served on EMBL's Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) in 1975 and 1976. He was also Vice-Chair of EMBO Council in 1986, Chair of EMBO Council from 1987 to 1990, and Editor-in-Chief of "The EMBO Journal" from 1987 to 1990.

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        DE-EMBL ID-P-BIR01

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            Sources

            This record was created with the help of several publications, including the three following obituaries (which can be found in DE 2324 P-BIR-8):

            • Grunstein, Michael and Bird, Adrian, "Max Birnstiel 1933–2014" in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences", January 2015, 112 (2), pp. 302-303, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1423755112 (accessed 2018-10-19).
            • Schatz, Gottfried, "Max L. Birnstiel (1933–2014)" in "Cell", January 2015, 160(1), pp. 11-12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.12.030 (accessed 2018-10-19).
            • Busslinger, Meinrad, "Max L. Birnsteil" in "Almanach 163./164. Jahrgang 2013/2014" from the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. 465-471.

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