β Scribed by Hans-Curt Flemming
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Wolfgang Sand was born in 1950 in Hamburg and is a true son of his city -he spent the first 54 years of his life there and if he would not have had the chance to join the Biofilm Centre at the University of Duisburg-Essen, he would probably happily stayed there. The Biofilm Centre, however, is very glad he made the transition, although some homesickness can be detected occasionally. But a hanseatic mind is far from sentimentality and tends neither to be over-sad nor over-happy.
After studying biology, he performed his Ph. D. thesis under the supervision of Eberhard Bock about investigations of Γhydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase from Nitrobacter agilis which he finished 1981 with great success. After some time as a postdoc, he established his own group for Applied Geomicrobiology at the University of Hamburg which had a straight orientation to industrial applications, in particular to microbially influenced corrosion and bioleaching of metal sulfides. This resulted in longterm industry-funded projects and some large joint projects funded by the Federal Ministery of Research and Technology (BMFT) as well as the German Foundation for Environmental Protection and the National Research Foundation (DFG). International projects were funded by the EU and COST.
A very practical aspect of nitrification is the formation of biogenic nitric acid by nitrification. This leads to massive mineral corrosion in historical buildings such as the Cologne Dome as well as in concrete, such as sewer lines in Hamburg. Using specifically designed simulation chambers, he could reproduce the damage phenomena and evaluate the efficacy of protective measures. The simulation chambers were notorious for his industrial partners which called them ''material torture cells''.
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