biology

Werner Franke

Werner Franke is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Werner Franke rather than just read about it. In short: Werner Wilhelm Franke (31 January 1940 – 14 November 2022) was a German biologist and a professor of cell and molecular biology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He was an anti-doping pioneer in Germany.

Key takeaways

Werner Franke belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Werner Franke to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Werner Franke from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Werner Wilhelm Franke (31 January 1940 – 14 November 2022) was a German biologist and a professor of cell and molecular biology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He was an anti-doping pioneer in Germany.

Life Franke was born in Paderborn on 31 January 1940. After completing high school (Abitur at Gymnasium Theodorianum), he studied chemistry, biology and physics at the University of Heidelberg. Following completion of his doctorate (Heidelberg) and habilitation (Freiburg) he became a university professor in Heidelberg and, at the same time, became the head of a department at the German Cancer Research Center. In 1982, Franke became the president of the European Cell Biology Organization (ECBO), a post he held until 1990. His main research field was the molecular characterization of the cytoskeleton in normal and transformed cells. He was also a doping expert. Franke died on 14 November 2022 from an intracerebral hemorrhage, at age 82.

Drug abuse in sports Franke is considered to have been a leading expert in performance-enhancing drugs and one of the most ardent critics of drug abuse in sports. Together with his wife, Brigitte Berendonk, once an Olympic discus thrower and shot putter, he fought against drug abuse in sports. He assisted his wife in researching the 1991 book Doping: From Research to Deceit, uncovering the systematic use of doping by East German athletes. Franke defended cyclist Danilo Hondo after the banned substance Carphedon was found in his blood during the 2005 Vuelta a Murcia. Franke argued that the amount found in his blood was "laughably small" and that "you can only get this medication through certain channels in Russia or China, where it is used by the military and the space flight programs." During an interview on 3 August 2006 with German regional television channel rheinmaintv, Franke claimed that cyclist Jan Ullrich purchased about €35,000 worth of doping products a year from Eufemiano Fuentes based on documents uncovered in the Operación Puerto doping case. A German court imposed a gag order on Franke after it found there was not enough evidence to link Ullrich to doping. However, that case returned to court with DNA analysis linking Ullrich to nine bags of blood seized in the Puerto case, and eventually after four years, Franke won the case.

Awards 1981 Meyenburg Prize 1984 Ernst Jung Prize 2004 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Memberships 1977 European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) 1986 Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1988 Honorary Member of the American Association for Anatomy 1989 Academia Europaea

Works

Cell biology Franke is author and co-author of c. 660 original articles in the field of cell and molecular biology. As of 2022, his h-index is 158, according to Google scholar.

Moll, Roland; Franke, Werner W.; Schiller, Dorothea L.; Geiger, Benjamin; Krepler, Reinhard (1982). "The catalog of human cytokeratins: Patterns of expression in normal epithelia, tumors and cultured cells". Cell. 31 (1). Elsevier BV: 11–24. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(82)90400-7. ISSN 0092-8674. PMID 6186379. S2CID 33701361. Wiedenmann, Bertram; Franke, Werner W. (1985). "Identification and localization of synaptophysin, an integral membrane glycoprotein of Mr 38,000 characteristic of presynaptic vesicles". Cell. 41 (3). Elsevier BV: 1017–1028. doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(85)80082-9. ISSN 0092-8674. PMID 3924408. S2CID 27796276. Franke, W W; Schmid, E; Osborn, M; Weber, K (1978). "Different intermediate-sized filaments distinguished by immunofluorescence microscopy". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 75 (10): 5034–5038. Bibcode:1978PNAS...75.5034F. doi:10.1073/pnas.75.10.5034. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 336257. PMID 368806.

Doping Franke, Werner; Ludwig, Udo (2007). Der verratene Sport : Die Machenschaften der Doping-Mafia; Täter, Opfer und was wir ändern müssen (in German). [München]. ISBN 978-3-89883-185-7. OCLC 255677001.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Berendonk, Brigitte (1992). Doping: Von der Forschung zum Betrug [Doping: From Research to Deceit] (in German). Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. ISBN 3-499-18677-2. OCLC 231377968. Franke, Werner; Berendonk, Brigitte (1997). "Hormonal doping and androgenization of athletes: a secret program of the German Democratic Republic government". Clinical Chemistry. 43 (7): 1262–1279. doi:10.1093/clinchem/43.7.1262. ISSN 0009-9147. PMID 9216474.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Werner Franke

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Werner Franke claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Werner Franke before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Werner Franke ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Werner Franke

In research: Werner Franke appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Werner Franke in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Werner Franke is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1940 births, 2022 deaths, 20th-century German biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Werner Franke outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Werner Franke in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Werner Franke means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Werner Franke out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Werner Franke in simple terms?

Why does Werner Franke matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Werner Franke?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Werner Franke.