User:MaUlira50/sandbox

Wolfram Hans-Peter Thiemann (born January 29, 1938 in Opole, Upper Silesia) is a German physical chemist and professor emeritus at the University of Bremen, whose main research activities were in the field of human exposure to environmental pollutants, water quality and technologies for water treatment using physical methods, as well as the origin of life on Earth and the search for traces of life in space in connection with the origin of homochirality.

Biography

Thiemann is the son of Max Thiemann, a doctor of economics, and his wife Margot. Shortly before the end of World War II, at the age of seven, he was forced to flee to Upper Bavaria with his mother and his sister Kristine, who was two and a half years older than him. He initially lived in emergency accommodations in Übersee on Lake Chiemsee. Although he was also Catholic, he had a very difficult time at the local elementary school because he felt unrecognized as a refugee and non-Bavarian. Afterwards, Thiemann briefly attended the Classical Gymnasium in neighboring Traunstein. Supported by his father's contacts, his family moved to Munich, where he attended the Theresien-Gymnasium for a year and a half. The family moved to Minden, where Thiemann graduated from the Ratsgymnasium in 1957, majoring in Latin and Ancient Greek.

He began studying chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 1957. Since his father soon received a job offer in Berlin, and he desired more creative teaching methods and less crowded lecture halls like in Munich, he moved there with his family and began his third semester of chemistry at the Free University of Berlin-Dahlem. Initially finding the studies there uninspiring, he took advantage of a scholarship after one semester and transferred to Wesleyan University Middletown in Connecticut, USA, in 1958. He remained at the elite university until 1959, learning about quantum chemistry and quantum mechanics, among other things. Afterward, Wolfram Thiemann returned to the Free University of Berlin, motivated to pursue his studies. Less interested in pure laboratory analyses of chemical products, he wrote his diploma thesis on isotope enrichment in 1963 at what was then the Hahn-Meitner Institute (HMI) for Nuclear Research in Berlin-Wannsee. From 1963 to 1966, he worked as a research assistant at this institute, which was headed by the nuclear chemist Karl-Erik Zimen, a student of Otto Hahn. Together with the physicist Klaus Wagener, he also supervised Wolfram Thiemann's dissertation on the enrichment of carbon isotopes by countercurrent ion migration, which he defended in 1966. Until 1968, Wolfram Thiemann also held the position of senior research assistant at the HMI Berlin.

In 1968, he accepted an invitation to Jülich from Klaus Wagener, who had accepted a position as professor of biophysics at the RWTH Aachen University and had also been appointed director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the KFA Jülich. Here, Wolfram Thiemann had absolute freedom to choose a scientific topic. He then researched the origin of life in a small research group, paying particular attention to the homochirality of the terrestrial biosphere, also with the help of laboratory experiments that employed enrichment mechanisms that, as in Berlin, exploited countercurrent ion migration. He spent a sabbatical year in 1979/80 as a visiting scientist at the Laboratory for Chemical Evolution, Department of Chemistry, at the University of Maryland. Until his last days in Jülich, he was a member of the works council and the Scientific Council of the KFA. His increasing commitment, including his public outcry, in criticizing the development of nuclear energy in Germany in the 1970s earned him considerable trouble within the KFA and RWTH Aachen University. As a consequence of this conflict between the "state doctrine" demanded by the KFA and the need for freedom of expression as a scientist, Thiemann ultimately withdrew his application to initiate a habilitation procedure in Aachen. Without completing such a habilitation thesis, he accepted a professorship in physical chemistry with a focus on the kinetics of chemical reactions, environmental sciences, and space chemistry at the University of Bremen in 1986. His main research activities included the development of highly sensitive instruments for the analysis of organic chemicals, the study of the origin and evolution of life on Earth, and the search for and investigation of the causes of homochiral amino acids. Author and reviewer activities, conference organization, teaching assignments at other universities, and collaboration on international projects, particularly his commitment to academic collaborations with developing and emerging countries, shaped the work of Wolfram Thiemann, who retired in 2003.

He raised two daughters with his first wife, Isabella, and adopted the nephew of his second Chinese wife, Que Wen.

Research Work

On Isotope Separation

At the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, Wolfram Thiemann conducted research on the enrichment of lithium isotopes 6 and 7, as well as carbon isotopes 12, 13, and 14, using countercurrent migration. He further developed the nuclear identification of the lithium-6 isotope by neutron capture activation and identified stable carbon isotopes using mass spectroscopy.

The central research topic of his work at the Jülich Nuclear Research Facility was the search for the origin of homochirality in the terrestrial biosphere. He analyzed amino acids using new chromatographic methods, investigated the enrichment of minute energy differences (as a consequence of the so-called parity violation of the weak interaction) using physicochemical methods such as repeated precipitation or polymerization, and investigated the influence of magnetic fields on the stereoselective synthesis of enantiomeric molecules.

On the Origin of Life

Scientifically, he and his Bremen research group intensively researched homochirality, the one-sided expression of chirality in biomolecules not only on our planet but also on celestial objects beyond Earth. At the University of Bremen, they attempted to find an answer to the question of how to simulate conditions in the laboratory under which the first homochiral structures would develop, from which the first protocells could subsequently have emerged in the course of chemical, prebiological evolution.[2][3][4]

As part of a second research project in Bremen, he investigated whether the homochirality of organic molecules, whose widespread existence in space, both in interstellar dust and on other planets, comets, asteroids, and meteorites, could even serve as a suitable biomarker for proving the existence of living matter, providing clues to biological structures beyond our terrestrial environment.[5][6][7][8]

The location of the Cometary Sampling and Composition Experiment (COSAC) on board ESA's Philae lander

His Bremen research group was invited, among other things, to participate scientifically in the Rosetta-Philae project, which was sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) and operated by the then Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau under the project leadership of Helmut Rosenbauer. In close collaboration with the MPI group, an experimental setup was conceived and constructed in Bremen. Two analytical instruments were to be deployed to the surface of a comet on board a space probe. Suitable instruments were to be used to search for the possible existence of (homo-)chiral carbon-containing molecules. The focus of the research was the development of a miniaturized chromatograph, which would be used to search for chiral amino acids on comet surfaces.[9][10][11]

After several years of preparation, the Rosetta probe was launched from Kourou, French Guiana, in South America, on March 2, 2004, on its journey to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After reaching the comet after a 10-year journey, the lander Philae landed on the comet's surface on November 12, 2014. The equipment developed at the University of Bremen together with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPI) as part of the COSAC (Cometary Sampling and Composition Experiment) subproject, a mass spectrometer and a gas chromatograph for detecting chiral carbonaceous molecules, were deployed on board Philae. However, after several bounces across the comet's surface, the lander finally landed in a crevice in the sun's shadow. Due to a lack of solar panel power, most of the planned measurements could not be performed. Despite this glitch, at least some important carbonaceous chemicals were briefly identified by mass spectrometry. However, the COSAC team was unable to conduct gas chromatographic analyses.

Wolfram Thiemann is currently following with great interest the ESA's planning work, which he also supports, to continue the search for biosignatures on Mars using a rover as part of the European-Russian ExoMars mission. An American MOMA (Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer) instrument installed on the rover integrates a Goddard linear ion trap mass spectrometer, a French gas chromatograph, and a German laser. The existence of sugar molecules and amino acids with excessive molecular homochirality (asymmetry) could provide important clues to the possible biological origin of these molecules, as well as to the possible existence of past life on Mars. Due to the exclusion of the Russian scientists originally involved in this project in 2022, the launch of this mission will be significantly delayed, not until 2028 at the earliest.

On Organic Chemistry

At the University of Bremen, he developed new analytical methods for the identification and quantification of low-concentration organic substances in drinking water, surface water, and swimming pool water, in the air, or in food. He primarily used liquid and gas chromatography methods in combination with electron capture detectors, which are specifically suited for the identification of low-concentration halogen-containing components. Wolfram Thiemann organized the nationwide collection of water samples from outdoor and indoor swimming pools and tested disinfection methods that could be used as an alternative to chlorine in swimming pools. He conducted in vitro toxicological studies using enzyme reactions, in vivo studies with daphnia and algae, and biochemical studies on the behavior of heavy metals such as lead. He further investigated circular dichroism in the visible and ultraviolet spectral ranges. Finally, he researched the analysis of organic chemicals in space using gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy, particularly with the goal of detecting organic substances on comets as part of the Rosetta mission or planned missions to Mars.

On the Interdisciplinary Study Project Weserwasser

Wolfram Thiemann and Klaus Bätjer at the presentation of the University of Bremen's interdisciplinary research project "Weser Water" (1976–1982) by the Bremen University Archives (BUA) on April 17, 2024.

In the 1970s, an increased cancer rate was detected in the state of Bremen. The "Weser Water" study project at the University of Bremen subsequently investigated a possible connection between the quality of Weser water and the quality of life in this state. As part of this project, physicist and environmental expert Klaus Bätjer, limnologist Michael Schirmer, and, from 1976, chemist Wolfram Thiemann, investigated the causes of the contamination of Bremen's drinking water. Analyzing the water samples, they found very high levels of halogenated hydrocarbons such as bromoform and chloroform. These were not primarily present in the highly saline Weser water itself, but were essentially added to the drinking water supply at the Bremen waterworks through the addition of chlorine.

Professors at the University of Bremen assessed the presence of these substances in drinking water as a health hazard and the technology used in the waterworks as outdated. Despite initial resistance from the Bremen Environmental and Health Authority and politicians, they recommended urgent action. Only after the three scientists informed the public through leaflets and the press, and several renowned scientific institutes and employees of the Hamburg Senator for the Environment confirmed the findings of this university group, did Bremen organize the increased extraction of groundwater from the surrounding area of ​​​​Lower Saxony. Experts currently assess the quality of drinking water in Bremen as particularly good. Thiemann criticized the abandonment of drinking water extraction from the Weser. In his view, the use of better treatment technologies in the waterworks would have been a more suitable solution for financial and environmental reasons.[12]