✎ About Otto Fritz Meyerhof

Otto Fritz Meyerhof was born on April 12, 1884 in Hanover, German, is Physician and Biochemist. Otto Fritz Meyerhof was a German physician and biochemist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the fixed relationship between oxygen consumption and metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle. Meyerhof was born to Jewish parents in Hildesheim. However, when he was an infant, the family moved to Berlin. It was at Berlin that Meyerhof gained his scientific education. A kidney disease temporarily disrupted his studies but gave him an artistic and intellectual insight that helped him in the later phase of his scientific career. After graduating with an honorary doctorate degree, Meyerhof started his career working in a laboratory at Heidelberg. In 1920, he made the revolutionary discovery that won him a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He shared the prize with English physiologist, Archibald Vivian Hill who in turn discovered the production of heat in muscles. In his five decades of scientific career, Meyerhof took up many administrative positions. He headed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research at Heidelberg from 1929 to 1938. In 1938, he served as the Director of Research at the Institut de Biologie physico-chimique at Paris. In United States, he attained the position of a Research Professor of Physiology Chemistry.
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Biography/Timeline

1888

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 became parents of a daughter, Bettina, and two sons, Gottfried (who referred, after emigration, to himself as Geoffrey) as well as Walter.

1912

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, a position he held until 1938. Escaping the Nazi regime, he emigrated to Paris in 1938. He then moved to the United States in 1940, where he was appointed a guest professorship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In recognition of his contributions to the study of glycolysis, the Common series of reactions for the pathway in Eukaryotes is known as the Embden–Meyerhof–Parnas Pathway.

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1884 births 1951 deaths German biochemists German Nobel laureates Jewish American scientists Jewish chemists Jewish physicians American people of German-Jewish descent German Jews Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine People from Hanover People from the Province of Hanover Scientists from Berlin People from the Province of Brandenburg Heidelberg University alumni University of Pennsylvania faculty University of Kiel faculty University of Strasbourg alumni Foreign Members of the Royal Society Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States