Martin Karplus

Martin Karplus (German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈkaʁplʊs]; March

15, 1930 – December 28, 2024) was an Austrian and Martin Karplus
American theoretical chemist. He was the Theodore
William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard
University. He was also the director of the Biophysical
Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the
French National Center for Scientific Research and the
University of Strasbourg, France. Karplus received the
2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael
Levitt and Arieh Warshel, for "the development of
multiscale models for complex chemical
systems".[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Nobel Prize Laureate Martin Karplus during

press conference in Stockholm,
Early life December 2013
Born March 15, 1930
Martin Karplus was born on March 15, 1930, in
Vienna, Austria[2]
Vienna, Austria.[8][9] He was a child when his family
fled from the Nazi-occupation in Austria a few days Died December 28, 2024 (aged 94)
after the Anschluss in March 1938, spending several Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
months in Zürich, Switzerland and La Baule, France Citizenship American, Austrian[2]
before immigrating to the United States.[10] Prior to Education Harvard University (BA)
their immigration to the United States, the family was
California Institute of Technology
known for being "an intellectual and successful secular
(PhD)
Jewish family" in Vienna.[11] His grandfather, Johann
Paul Karplus (1866–1936) was a highly acclaimed Awards Irving Langmuir Award (1987)
professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna.[12] Award in Theoretical Chemistry
His great-aunt, Eugenie Goldstern, was an ethnologist (1993)[1]
who was killed during the Holocaust.[13] He was the ForMemRS (2000)
nephew, by marriage, of the sociologist, philosopher
Linus Pauling Award (2004)
and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno and
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2013)
grandnephew of the physicist Robert von Lieben. His
brother, Robert Karplus, was an internationally Scientific career
recognized physicist and educator at University of Fields Theoretical chemistry
California, Berkeley. Continuing with the academic Institutions Université de Strasbourg[2]
Harvard University
Columbia University
University of Illinois Urbana-
Champaign
family theme, his nephew, Andrew Karplus, is a Thesis A quantum-mechanical discussion
biochemistry and biophysics professor at Oregon State of the bifluoride ion (http://codates
University.[14] t2.library.caltech.edu/44/) (1954)
Doctoral Linus Pauling[2]
advisor
Education Website www.chemistry.harvard.edu
/people/martin-karplus (https://ww
After earning an AB degree in Chemistry and Physics
w.chemistry.harvard.edu/people/
from Harvard College in 1951,[15] Karplus pursued
martin-karplus)
graduate studies at the California Institute of
Technology. He completed his PhD in 1953[16] under
Nobel laureate Linus Pauling.[17] According to Pauling, Karplus "was [his] most brilliant student."[18] He
was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (1953–55)[16] where he worked with
Charles Coulson.[15]

Teaching career
Karplus taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1955–60) and then Columbia
University (1960–65) before moving to join the Chemistry Department faculty at Harvard in 1966.[8][16]

He was a professor at the Louis Pasteur University in 1996 where he established a research group in
Strasbourg, France, after two sabbatical visits between 1992 and 1995 in the NMR laboratory of Jean-
François Lefèvre. He has supervised more than 200 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers over
his career since 1955.[19]

Personal life and death

Karplus was married to Marci[15] and had three children.[8] He died at his home in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on December 28, 2024, at the age of 94.[20][21]

Research
Karplus published his first academic paper when he was 17 years old.[15] Karplus contributed to many
fields in physical chemistry, including chemical dynamics, quantum chemistry, and most notably,
molecular dynamics simulations of biological macromolecules. He has also been influential in nuclear
magnetic resonance spectroscopy, particularly to the understanding of nuclear spin-spin coupling and
electron spin resonance spectroscopy. The Karplus equation describing the correlation between coupling
constants and dihedral angles in proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is named after him.[22]

From 1969 to 1970, Karplus visited the Structural Studies Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular
Biology.[23]
In 1970 postdoctoral fellow Arieh Warshel joined Karplus at Harvard. Together they wrote a computer
program that modeled the atomic nuclei and some electrons of a molecule using classical physics and
modeling other electrons using quantum mechanics. In 1974 Karplus, Warshel and other collaborators
published a paper based on this type of modeling, which successfully modeled the change in shape of
retinal, a large complex protein molecule important to vision.[16]

His research was concerned primarily with the properties of molecules of biological interest. His group
originated and coordinated the development of the CHARMM program for molecular dynamics
simulations.[24]

Books
Karplus, Martin (2020). Spinach on the Ceiling: The Multifaceted Life of a Theoretical
Chemist. WORLD SCIENTIFIC (EUROPE). doi:10.1142/q0238 (https://doi.org/10.1142%2F
q0238). ISBN 978-1-78634-802-9.
Brooks, Charles L.; Karplus, Martin; Pettitt, B. Montgomery (November 16, 1988). Advances
in Chemical Physics, Volume 71. New York: Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 978-0-471-62801-9.
Karplus, Martin; Porter, Richard N. (1970). Atoms and Molecules: An Introduction for
Students of Physical Chemistry. New York: W. A. Benjamin. ISBN 978-0-8053-5218-4.

Notable students and postdocs

Source:[25]

Charles L. Brooks III (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)[26]

Axel T. Brunger (Stanford University)[27]
J. Andrew McCammon (UCSD) (w/ Karplus and Gelin) published the first MD simulation of
BPTI[28]
P. T. Narasimhan (University of Illinois) Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate
B. Montgomery Pettitt (University of Texas Medical Branch, Baylor College of Medicine, The
Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC)])[29]
Benoît Roux (University of Chicago)
Andrej Šali (University of California, San Francisco)
Klaus Schulten (University of Illinois)
Jeremy C. Smith (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
David J. States (The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston)
Arieh Warshel (University of Southern California) (co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry, along with Karplus and Michael Levitt (Stanford))
Eugene Shakhnovich, (Harvard University)[10]
Alexander D. MacKerell Jr. (University of Maryland, Baltimore)

Awards and honours

Karplus was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1967.[30] He was awarded the
Irving Langmuir Award in 1987.[31] He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular
Science. He became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991[32]
and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2000.[33] He is a recipient of the
Christian B. Anfinsen Award, given in 2001. He was awarded the Linus Pauling Award in 2004 and the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013.[2]

See also
List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References
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 9. Richter, Hannes (August 16, 2024). "Nobel Laureate Martin Karplus Receives Highest
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17. Karplus, Martin (1954). A quantum-mechanical discussion of the bifluoride ion (https://web.a
rchive.org/web/20150518081923/http://codatest2.library.caltech.edu/44/) (PhD thesis).
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0/harvard-professor-wins-nobel-in-chemistry/). October 9, 2013. Archived (https://web.archiv
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30. "Martin Karplus" (http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/53964.html).
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External links
Martin Karplus (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/889) on Nobelprize.org – including the
Nobel Lecture on December 8, 2013 "Development of Multiscale Models for Complex
Chemical Systems From H+H2 to Biomolecules"
Publications (http://mir.harvard.edu/group/karplus/pub.html)
Karplus research group at Harvard University (http://chemistry.harvard.edu/people/martin-ka
rplus)
"Institute of Supramolecular Science and Engineering (ISIS)" (https://en.unistra.fr/research/s
ciences-and-technologies/institute-of-supramolecular-science-and-engineering-isis-umr-700
6). University of Strasbourg. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
Biography at Michigan State University website (https://web.archive.org/web/200609070016
21/http://www.chemistry.msu.edu/Lectureships/lectures.asp?series=MTR&Year=1995)
Martin Karplus photography website (http://www.mkarplusphotographer.com/)
"Martin Karplus: Chemistry H-index & Awards" (https://research.com/u/martin-karplus).
Research.com. Retrieved January 3, 2025.

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