Ulf Diederichsen (1963–2021)

Abstract

“For he was our own! … Fruitful both in counsel and deed; this we experienced and appreciated.” With the death of Ulf Diederichsen on November 11, 2021, after a short but severe illness, we lost a great scientist in chemical biology and good friend. He was a generous and extremely gifted man whose strength was to tackle essential biological problems at a molecular level with simple model systems and to draw insightful conclusions realizing a hallmark of chemical biology by addressing biological challenges with chemical approaches derived from simple principles. Ulf Diederichsen was born on October 7, 1963, in Munich and grew up in Göttingen, enjoying excellent scholar education at the Max-Planck Gymnasium. He moved to Freiburg im Breisgau in 1983 to study Chemistry at the Albert-Ludwigs-University. For his doctorate he moved to Zurich in 1988 to work with Prof. Eschenmoser at the ETH on the question why Nature chose pentose—but not hexose nucleic acids. He received the Dr. rer. nat. in 1993 on the Base pairing of hypoxanthine in HOMO DNA oligonucleotides and the question of the pairing behavior of glucopyranosyl oligonucleotides. He then joined the group of Prof. Dennis P. Curran at the University of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh/USA) as postdoctoral researcher (1993–1994) investigating radical chemistry. Back to Europe he started his habilitation on “Linear nucleic acid analogues with peptidic backbones” under the mentorship of Prof. Horst Kessler at the Technical University of Munich, which was finished in 1999. He then joined the University of Würzburg as Professor of Organic Chemistry, and finally, in 2001, the University of Göttingen. He served as Dean (2005 to 2007) and Vice President for Research (2015 to 2021). In addition, he was Guest Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (1998–1999) and Goering Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, USA (2000). He was elected member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen in 2012 and became its president in 2020. His scientific interest was mainly centered on the non-covalent interaction of peptide helices with respect to the incorporation, organization, and dynamics in lipid membranes. He successfully employed spin-labeled peptides for distance measurements. Similarly, he addressed the membrane attachment and fusion processes of SNARE proteins with model systems (conjugates of transmembrane peptides with coiled coil peptides or peptide nucleic acids). He was interested in functionalized β-peptides as artificial matrices for aggregation and modification of model membranes. The excellent results of this outstanding research were summarized in largely over 100 publications in highly renowned international journals. Besides his exceptional scientific achievements and admirable mentorship for a large number of doctoral students and postdocs, he deserves high recognition for his excellent research management particularly as Vice President of the University of Göttingen. He also served as a highly esteemed reviewer in various panels, including the German Research Foundation. The large experience collected in this important activity, particularly also for the German peptide community, he adapted in a very successful manner also in his editorial engagement as Deputy Editor of the Journal of Peptide Science since 2012, where he was supposed to take over the full responsibility as the Editor-in-Chief from 2022. Those of us who knew him are saddened by his sudden passing away and mourn the great loss of a dear friend and colleague. He will always be remembered as an inspiring teacher and mentor, as an enthusiastic scientist, but first and foremost as a warm and sincere human being, as a “feiner Kerl.”