Max Birnstiel

Max Luciano Birnstiel (12 July 1933 – 15 November 2014) was a Swiss molecular biologist who held a number of positions in scientific leadership in Europe, including the chair of the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Zurich from 1972 to 1986, and that of founding director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna from 1986 to 1996. His research focused on gene regulation in eukaryotes. His research group was the first to purify single genes, the ribosomal RNA genes from Xenopus laevis in 1965. He is also recognized for one of the earliest discoveries of a gene enhancer element in 1980. Birnstiel died in 2014 of heart failure during cancer treatment.

Early life and education

Birnstiel was born in Brazil in 1933; his father, also Max Birnstiel, was Swiss and his mother, Dalila Varella, was Brazilian. The family moved to Switzerland when the younger Max was five years old, and he was educated in Zurich. He received his Ph.D. in botany in 1959 from ETH Zurich under the supervision of Albert Frey-Wyssling and then became a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology with James Bonner.

Academic career

In 1963, Birnstiel was recruited by Conrad Waddington to a faculty position in the genetics department at the University of Edinburgh, where he remained until 1972, advancing to the rank of professor. His work at Edinburgh included studying the physical properties of genes, leading to the successful purification of ribosomal RNA genes from Xenopus laevis; this body of work was performed with Ph.D. students Adrian Bird, Michael Grunstein, and Hugh Wallace and led to further study of gene structure in collaboration with Donald Brown.