Butenandt, Adolf Friedrich Johann, 1903–95, German biochemist, Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1927. Butenandt held academic posts at the Univ. of Göttingen (1927–33) and the Institute of Technology at Danzig (1933–36). From 1936 to 1960, he was a professor at the Univ. of Berlin and director of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Berlin. In 1960, he was appointed president of the Max Planck Society in Munich, a position he held until 1972. Butenandt was corecipient of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Leopold Ružička; Butenandt was cited for his work on sex hormones. He is credited with elucidating the underlying structure of both male and female sex hormones. His work on the sex hormones led to the large-scale production of cortisone, which has been used to treat a broad array of medical conditions.
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