Kurt Wüthrich is a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry (2002), a professor of biophysics at ETH Zürich (Switzerland); a visiting professor at Scripps Research Institute (USA) and at the Graduate Program in Chemistry Biology, UFRJ (Brazil); and researcher of the National Institute for Science and Technology of Structural Biology and Bioimaging (Brazil). In July 2012, he helped establish the National Center of Structural Biology and Bioimaging.
Professor Wüthrichwas awarded the Nobel Prize for his use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to calculate the three-dimensional structure of the protein molecule. He developed an innovative general method of systematic assignment of specific fixed points on the protein molecule and also a principle for determining the distances between them.