Heinrich Wieland


Heinrich Otto Wieland

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Heinrich Otto Wieland
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1927

Born: 4 June 1877, Pforzheim, Germany

Died: 5 August 1957, Munich, West Germany (now Germany)

Affiliation at the time of the award: Munich University, Munich, Germany

Prize motivation: "for his investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances."

Heinrich Wieland received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1928.

Prize share: 1/1


The multitudinous processes that allow our body to function involve a number of different substances. Bile acids are formed in the liver and secreted via the gall bladder in the duodenum. At the beginning of the 1920s, Heinrich Wieland researched bile acids and charted their composition. Among other things, his results helped to clarify the function of bile acids in the assimilation of various substances from the intestine. Heinrich Wieland also studied bufotoxin, a poisonous substance that is formed by many toads and that is related to bile acids.

To cite this section
MLA style: Heinrich Wieland – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021. Sat. 18 Sep 2021. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1927/wieland/facts/>


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