Adolf Windaus
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1928
Born: 25 December 1876, Berlin, Germany
Died: 9 June 1959, Göttingen, West Germany (now Germany)
Affiliation at the time of the award: Goettingen University, Göttingen, Germany
Prize motivation: “for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins”
Prize share: 1/1
Work
Cholesterol is an important component in the body’s cells and plays a major role in several biochemical processes. During the 1920s Adolf Windaus researched the composition of cholesterol and closely related substances, sterols. He established the sterols’ relationship with bile acids. Windaus also found that ergosterol, another sterol, had the ability to cure rickets, a disease characterized by skeletal weakness and caused by a deficiency of vitamin D. He was able to show that vitamin D was formed out of ergosterol under the influence of ultraviolet light.
Watch the 2025 Nobel Prize lectures, Nobel Week Dialogue, the prize award ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm and Nobel Peace Prize Forum here at nobelprize.org.
