Castle Laboratory

The former kitchen at Hohentübingen Castle was transformed by the university into the world's first biochemical laboratory in the early nineteenth century. Today, this room is used as a museum, a place of scientific history. It was here that the first German biochemist Georg Karl Ludwig Sigwart (1784–1864) worked from 1818; it was here that Felix Hoppe-Seyler (1825–1895) researched and named hemoglobin, and it was here that Friedrich Miescher (1844–1895) discovered nucleic acid, the basic substance of the hereditary substances DNA and RNA, in 1869.

Thanks to the financial support of the biopharmaceutical company CureVac AG, the university set up a permanent interactive exhibition at the historic site in 2015. At the center of the presentation is Miescher's still-existing test tube with nucleic acid and other historical laboratory equipment and preparations, which help to present the decisive chapters of biochemistry.

Additional information about the Castle Laboratory