Eckard Wimmer was born on 22 May 1936 and is a German American virologist, organic chemist and distinguished professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Stony Brook University.
15 Facts About Eckard Wimmer
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Eckard Wimmer is best known for his seminal work on the molecular biology of poliovirus and the first chemical synthesis of a viral genome capable of infection and subsequent production of live viruses.
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Eckard Albert Friedrich Wimmer was born on May 22,1936, in Berlin, Germany.
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At the onset of World War II, when Wimmer was three his father died; when he was nine his mother fled together with him and his two older brothers to Saxony, East Germany, where he finished elementary school and high school.
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Eckard Wimmer studied chemistry at the University of Rostock from 1953 to 1956, and then fled to West Germany to continue his Chemistry studies at University of Gottingen.
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Eckard Wimmer worked at the University of Gottingen as a research associate and instructor until 1964.
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In 1968, during a five-months visit in David Baltimore's laboratory at MIT, Eckard Wimmer was introduced to poliovirus, which became the infectious agent of his choice.
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Eckard Wimmer was honored as a Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2002.
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Eckard Wimmer is married since 1965 to Astrid nee Brose, a German physical therapist, who earned her Ph.
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Originally trained as an organic chemist, Eckard Wimmer developed a deep understanding and fascination for viruses as replicating biological entities as well as aggregates of organic compounds, or, "as chemicals with a life cycle".
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An IRES chimeric oncolytic poliovirus [PV ], originally constructed in Eckard Wimmer's laboratory, has now been developed by Matthias Gromeier at Duke University for the treatment of human glioma.
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Eckard Wimmer is co-discoverer of the poliovirus receptor CD155, a cell-adhesion molecule and tumor antigen, whose expression is regulated by the sonic hedgehog pathway.
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In 1991, Molla, Paul and Eckard Wimmer published the first de novo, cell-free synthesis of any virus.
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Several years later, Eckard Wimmer published an essay in EMBO Reports reflecting on hotly debated issues that this new kind of research generated.
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Recently, Eckard Wimmer's lab has elucidated the key step in the morphogenesis of poliovirus that has been elusive for decades.