... was born in 1844 in Basel, Switerland. In 1869, while working in Tübingen, Germany, he discovered certain chemicals in the nuclei of white blood cells; these chemicals are now known as nucleic acids. Miescher succeeded in extracting a precipitate from the blood cells; he called it nuclein, but it's now known as DNA. He suggested that nuclein may be somehow involved in heredity, but the full significance of his discovery wasn't apparent until the final years of the 19th century, when the German biochemist Albrecht Kossel discovered the chemical composition of nucleic acids. Kossel isolated and described the five organic compounds that are present in nucelic acid (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine and uracil) which are key in the formation of DNA and RNA.
Miescher also demonstrated that breathing is regulated by carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood.
He died in 1895, aged 51, from tuberculosis.
© Haydn Thompson 2017