Otto Fritz Meyerhof (Redirected from Otto Meyerhof)

Otto Fritz Meyerhof

Born(1884-04-12)12 April 1884
Died6 October 1951(1951-10-06) (aged 67)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
NationalityGerman
Alma materUniversity of Strasbourg
University of Heidelberg
University of Berlin
Known forRelationship between the consumption of oxygen and the metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle
AwardsNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1922
Fellow of the Royal Society
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics and Biochemistry
InstitutionsUniversity of Kiel

Otto Fritz Meyerhof (German pronunciation: [ˈɔto ˈmaɪ̯ɐˌhoːf] ; 12 April 1884 – 6 October 1951) was a German physician and biochemist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Biography

Otto Fritz Meyerhof was born in Hannover, at Theaterplatz 16A (now:Rathenaustrasse 16A), the son of wealthy Jewish parents. In 1888, his family moved to Berlin, where Otto spent most of his childhood, and where he started his study of medicine. He continued these studies in Strasbourg and Heidelberg, from which he graduated in 1909, with a work titled "Contributions to the Psychological Theory of Mental Illness".

In Heidelberg, he met Hedwig Schallenberg. They married in 1914 and had three children together: a daughter, Bettina, and two sons, Gottfried (who after emigration used the anglicized name Geoffrey) and Walter.

In 1912, Otto Meyerhof moved to the University of Kiel, where he received a professorship in 1918. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, with Archibald Vivian Hill, for his work on muscle metabolism, including glycolysis. In 1929, he became one of the directors of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, a position he held until 1938, when Jews were expelled from university teaching positions.

To escape the increasing oppression of Jews by the Nazi regime, in 1938 Meyerhof emigrated with his family to Paris. After the fall of France in 1940, they fled to Marseille. Aided by the Emergency Rescue Committee, they left the country by ship to the United States that year. Meyerhof was appointed to a guest professorship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Meyerhof died in Philadelphia at the age of 67. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize, he was recognized for his contributions to the study of glycolysis, by the naming of the common series of reactions for the pathway in Eukaryotes as the Embden–Meyerhof–Parnas Pathway.

See also


This page was last updated at 2023-11-10 04:59 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari