Albrecht Messerschmidt is head of a research group at Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, department of proteomics and signal transduction headed by Matthias Mann. He gained his PhD in Crystallography at the Humboldt University in Berlin under Bill Kleber. After working on the X-ray crystallography of small biological molecules he moved to the field of X-ray crystallography of biomacromolecules, working in the department of structural research under Nobel laureate Robert Huber. He gained his lecturing qualification in the field of physical biochemistry at the faculty of biology of the University of Constance in 1996, where he was appointed extraordinary professor in 2002.
The author has published great number of scientific papers and is one of the editors of the three volume Handbook of Metalloproteins, published by Wiley.