Edmond Henri Fischer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edmond Henri Fischer (2016)

Edmond H. Fischer (* 6. April 1920 in Shanghai , † 27. August 2021 in Seattle , Washington ) was a in China -born and in Switzerland grew up American biochemist of French descent. Together with Edwin Gerhard Krebs, he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1992 .

life and work

Edmond Henri Fischer was born in Shanghai to a French woman (Renée Tapernoux, her father founded the Courrier de Chine magazine in Shanghai) and an Austrian (Oscar Fischer). In Shanghai he attended the French school that his grandfather helped found. When he was seven years old, he and his brother were sent to a boarding school in Switzerland near Vevey . As a student he also attended the Conservatory in Geneva and considered becoming a musician for a while. He studied chemistry at the University of Geneva with a licentiate in 1943, a diploma in 1944 and a doctorate in organic chemistry (polysaccharides and associated enzymes, especially alpha- amylase ) in 1947 with Kurt Heinrich Meyer . From 1948 to 1950 he was a scientific member of the Swiss National Foundation. Then he was a private lecturer in biochemistry in Geneva. In 1950 he went to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena / USA as a research fellow from the Rockefeller Foundation and shortly afterwards to the University of Washington in Seattle as a post-doctoral student and Rockefeller fellow , where he began working with Edwin G. Krebs . In 1953 he became an assistant professor and later professor at the University of Washington, where he retired in 1990.

Together with Edwin G. Krebs, Fischer discovered the mechanism of the reversible activation and deactivation of enzymes through phosphorylation . This is a common process used to regulate metabolism. A protein kinase builds a phosphate group (obtained from ATP ) into the enzyme and thus changes its structure from inactive to active. This is triggered by hormones or calcium. Fischer investigated this mechanism with cancer first with glycogen phosphorylase and then with many other enzymes.

He was married from 1948 and had two children.

Honors

In 1972 Fischer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1973 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1992 he and Edwin Krebs received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discovery of the mechanisms that control metabolic processes in organisms”. Fischer was Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle .

In 2010 he became an external member of the Royal Society . He received honorary doctorates from the University of Basel , the University of Montpellier and the Medical College of Ohio.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nobel Laureate Edmond H. Fischer 1920-2021
  2. Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  3. ^ Gisela Baumgart: Fischer, Edmond Henri. 2005, p. 402.
  4. Edmond Henri Fischer, EG Cancer: Metabolic Interconversion of Enzymes. 1973.