Konrad Beyreuther

Konrad Bayreuther was the son of an evangelical pastor. He studied chemistry at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich. He wrote his PhD Thesis at the Max-Planck Institut für Biochemie in Munich. Until 1978 he was a scientific employee at the Institut for genetics at the university of Cologne.

Until 1987 he was a professor at the university of Cologne. From 1987 onwards he has held various positions at the University of Heidelberg.

Beyreuther's work with Colin L. Masters implicated amyloid precursor protein (APP) as a possible precursor of Alzheimer's disease.[1] Together with British researchers, he discovered the pathogenic prion that causes BSE, also known as mad cow disease, in 1998.[2]

Bayreuther received the Robert Pfleger Research Award in 1988 and the Feldberg Award in 1989. In 1990, he won the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease[3] with Robert D. Terry and was awarded the Potamkin Prize jointly with Masters.[4] Beyreuther and Masters both received Max Planck Research Awards in 1991,[5] and shared the Zülch Prize in 1995.[6] In 1997 they were awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine together with James F. Gusella for contributions to the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases.[7] Bayreuther has been elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities, and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.