Hartmut Michel is a German biochemist and Nobel Laureate.

He was born 18 July 1948 in Ludwigsburg. After compulsory military service, he studied biochemistry at Tubingen University , working for his final year at Dieter Oesterhelt ’s laboratory on ATPase activity of halobacteria.

He later worked on the crystallisation of membrane proteins - essential for their structure elucidation by X-ray crystallography. He received the Nobel Prize jointly with Johann Deisenhofer and Robert Huber in 1988.