Hans Adolf Krebs

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Hans Adolf Krebs

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (born August 25, 1900 in Hildesheim , † November 22, 1981 in Oxford ) was a German, later British physician , internist and professor of biochemistry . He was a pioneer in the study of biochemical processes in living cells. In doing so, he discovered important key cycles of biochemical metabolic reactions, the citric acid cycle and the urea cycle , as well as the glyoxylate cycle together with Hans Leo Kornberg . He worked from 1935 at the University of Sheffield, first as a lecturer in pharmacology and after the war as professor of biochemistry and head of the Medical Research Council unit for cell metabolism. From 1954 until his retirement in 1967 he taught at the University of Oxford . The Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953 for his discovery of the citric acid cycle .

Life

Hans Adolf Krebs was born in 1900 as the son of Georg Krebs, an ear, nose and throat doctor, and his wife Alma, née Davidson, the middle of three children in Hildesheim . From 1910 he attended the Andreanum grammar school in Hildesheim. Towards the end of the First World War in September 1918 he was drafted into the telecommunications force in the imperial German army. After the end of the war in November of the same year, he began studying medicine at the Georg-August University in Göttingen in 1918 . After moving to the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , he received his doctorate in 1925 at the University of Hamburg in the working group of the anatomist Wilhelm von Möllendorff .

Due to his interest in scientific work, after completing his doctorate, he worked for four years as an assistant to the biochemist and later Nobel Prize winner Otto Warburg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin-Dahlem .

After 1930 he worked as a doctor in Hamburg-Altona and from 1931 at the University Clinic Freiburg as assistant to Siegfried Thannhauser , where he completed his habilitation in 1932, until he was deprived of his teaching license as a Jew in 1933 by the "Rassengesetze" ( law to restore the civil service ) . He fled to England and studied again at Cambridge University , now biochemistry .

Hans Adolf Krebs married Margaret Fieldhouse in 1938. The marriage resulted in two sons and a daughter. His son John Krebs is a professor of zoology at Oxford and a member of the House of Lords . Hans Krebs died in Oxford in 1981 .

At the ceremony for the 750th anniversary of the Andreanum grammar school in 1975, he gave the speech in Hildesheim.

plant

Scheme of the urea cycle. The reactions take place both in the mitochondrion (above) and in the cytosol (below). 1: L - ornithine ; 2: carbamoyl phosphate ; 3: L - citrulline ; 4: argininosuccinate ; 5: fumarate ; 6: L - arginine ; 7: urea ; L- Asp: L - aspartate ; CPS-1: carbamoyl phosphate synthetase I ; OTC: ornithine transcarbamylase ; ASA: argininosuccinate synthase ; ASL: argininosuccinate lyase ; ARG1: arginase 1

In 1935 he became a lecturer and in 1945 professor of pharmacology at Sheffield University . In 1954 he was appointed to the Whitley Chair of Biochemistry at Oxford University. Krebs' area of ​​interest was intermediate metabolism . In 1932 - while still in Freiburg - he discovered the urea cycle (Krebs-Henseleit cycle) together with Kurt Henseleit and in 1937 the citric acid cycle , which is still often called the Krebs cycle today. For the latter discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953 (together with Fritz Albert Lipmann , New York) .

The journal Nature rejected Krebs' work on the citric acid cycle in 1937. The magazine justified this by stating that there were already enough letters to fill 7 to 8 weeks with correspondence, and added that it was “currently undesirable to accept further letters.” (“... it is undesirable to accept further letters at the present time ”). As a result, Krebs was forced to publish his findings in the much less well-known journal Enzymologia in the Netherlands. In 1988, seven years after Krebs' death, an anonymous editor published a letter in Nature describing Cancer’s rejection of the work as the journal’s “most egregious mistake”.

Quotes

"Hitler made me a Jew."

- Quoted from: Zvi Asaria: The Jews in Lower Saxony. Leer 1979, p. 357

Honors and memberships

Hans-Adolf-Krebs-Weg on the north campus of the University of Göttingen
Memorial plaque in the Freiburg University Hospital

Hans Adolf Krebs has received numerous awards for his scientific achievements. The Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952 . Queen Elizabeth II ennobled him in 1958 as a Knight Bachelor and he was addressed as "Sir". His hometown Hildesheim made him an honorary citizen in 1966 . In 1972 he was appointed to the foreign membership of the Teutonic Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts . Membership in this order is limited to 40 of the most respected German citizens and the same number of foreign members.

He was a fellow of the Royal Society (1947), member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957), Royal College of Physicians (1958), member of the American Philosophical Society (1960), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1964), des Royal College of Pathologists (1967), Honorary Member of the Leopoldina (1969), Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (1971), Corresponding Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1974) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1976). It was also a member of the National Academies of Medicine of France (1952), Belgium (1962) and Argentina (1977). Krebs was an Honorary Fellow of Trinity and Girton Colleges in Cambridge and St. Catherine's, St. Cross and Green Colleges in Oxford.

Between 1954 and 1980, Krebs received honorary doctorates from 21 universities, including those of the Hannover Medical School , the University of Cambridge , the University of Chicago , the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg , and the University of Sheffield.

In 1953 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research from the American Public Health Association , the Royal Medal (1954) and the Copley Medal (1961) from the Royal Society, and the Otto Warburg Medal (1969) from the Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology .

On the premises of the Freiburg University Clinic, the street on which the emergency room is located was named Sir-Hans-A.-Krebs-Straße in 2012 . There is also a memorial plaque in the medical clinic. The city of Ulm has named a street in the university campus after Hans Krebs, the Hans-Krebs-Weg at the Botanical Garden.

The Federation of European Biochemical Societies has awarded the Hans Krebs Medal for exceptional achievements in biochemistry or molecular biology since 1968 . The Society of Friends of the Hannover Medical School e. V. awards the Sir Hans Krebs Prize, endowed by Ernst-August Schrader and endowed with 10,000 euros, annually for an outstanding work in basic medical science published in a scientific journal.

Fonts (selection)

  • My love for Hildesheim has never stopped . Editor: Helga Stein. Lax, Hildesheim 1990.
  • Reminiscences and reflections. Clarendon Press, Oxford; Oxford University Press, New York, c1981.
  • How I was expelled from Germany - documents with comments. In: Medical History Journal. Volume 15, Issue 4, 1980, pp. 357-377.

literature

  • Klaus Roth : Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (1900–1981): Then I set out on my own to catch the 11 o'clock train. In: Klaus Roth: Chemical delicacies. Weinheim 2010, pages 168-181.
  • Frederic L. Holmes Hans Krebs: the formation of a scientific life 1900-1933 , Oxford University Press 1991
  • Frederic L. Holmes Hans Krebs: Architect of intermediary metabolism 1933-1937 , Oxford University Press 1993

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frederic Laurence Holmes: Hans Krebs. The formation of a scientific life 1900-1933. Volume 1 . Oxford University Press, 1991, New York, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-507072-0 , pp. 59-65.
  2. ↑ Klaus Roth: Then I went alone to catch the 11 o'clock train. Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (1900-1981). In: Chemistry in Our Time. 42, 2008, pp. 346-359, doi: 10.1002 / ciuz.200800471 .
  3. ↑ Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg: Nobel Prize Laureates of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.9 MB), February 2009, p. 16. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pr.uni-freiburg.de
  4. ↑ a b Information presentation on the qualification phase
  5. ↑ Hans Krebs - Biography
  6. ↑ Hans Adolf Krebs: BRITISH BIOCHEMIST 1900–1981.
  7. ↑ Nature rejects Krebs's paper, 1937 . The Scientist (free life science magazine; registration required) Article showing Nature's rejection letter to HA Krebs. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
  8. ↑ Krebs HA and Johnson, WA: The Role of Citric Acid in Intermediate Metabolism in Animal Tissues . In: Enzymologia . 4, 1937, pp. 148-156.
  9. ↑ Krebs HA and Johnson, WA: The Role of Citric Acid in Intermediate Metabolism in Animal Tissues . In: FEBS Lett . . 117, 1980, S. Suppl: K1-10 .. PMID 6998725 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e Hans Leo Kornberg, DH Williamson: Hans Adolf Krebs, 25 August 1900 - 22 November 1981. In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 30, 1984, pp. 351-385, doi: 10.1098 / rsbm.1984.0013 .
  11. ^ A street for Hans A. Krebs in Badische Zeitung from September 26, 2012.
  12. ^ Awarded the Sir Hans Krebs Prize at aerzteblatt.de

Web links

Commons : Hans Adolf Krebs  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Krebs, Hans Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German, later British physician and biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1981
Place of death Oxford