Born on June 27, 1937 in Osijek, he graduated from the University of Ljubljana, Department of Chemical Technology in 1961 and defended his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the same department in 1966. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona (Tuscon, AR), Department of Chemistry, from 1969 to 1970. Dr. Turk became Head of Department of Biochemistry (now Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), J. Stefan Institute, in 1971. He was appointed Professor of biochemistry and enzymology in 1985. Since July 1996 he is director of the Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Prof. Turk actively participates at many international conferences from the field of biochemistry and biotechnology and was often invited as a lecturer to European, USA and Japanese universities. He organised several national and international research conferences.
His scope of interests comprises the structure and function of lysosomal proteases and their inhibitors (stefins /named by the institute he heads/, cystatins, kininogens). With his coworkers, he published over 300 research articles in the leading biochemical journals. He was editor and co-editor of seven books and conference proceedings. He is a member of the editorial board of Biol. Chem. (former Biol. Chem. Hoppe-Seyler), Arch. Biochem. Biophys. and Protein and Peptide Lett. and a referee for Eur. J. Biochem., FEBS Lett., Biochemistry and Biochim. Biophys. Acta.
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