Nobel Laureates: Otto Fritz Meyerhof

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1922

Otto Fritz Meyerhof was awared the Noble Pize in Physiology or Medicine in 1922 "for his discovery of the fixed relationship between the consumption of oxygen and the metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle."

Meyerhof was born in 1884 and graduated with an M.D. in 1909. He did most of his work in Germany at Kiel University and, later on, at Heidelberg. In 1938 he fled to France and after the fall of France in 1940 he escaped to the United States where a position at the University of Pennsylvania was created for him. He died in 1951.

Meyerhof is best known for his work on glycolysis where he was one of the first to discover the role of phosphorylated intermediates. The classic glycolytic pathway in bacteria is known as the Embdem-Meyerhof-Parnas (EMP) pathway in honor of Meyerhof and his colleagues Gustav Embdem and Jacob Parnas.