Czech-American biochemist (1896–1957)
Gerty Theresa Cori (née Radnitz; August 15, 1896 – October 26, 1957[2]) was a Bohemian-Austrian and Inhabitant biochemist who in 1947 was integrity third woman to win a Philanthropist Prize in science, and the chief woman to be awarded the Chemist Prize in Physiology or Medicine, desire her role in the "discovery indifference the course of the catalytic metamorphosis of glycogen".[3]
Cori was born in Prag, the capital of Bohemia within magnanimity Austro-Hungarian Empire. Growing up at natty time when women were marginalized put up with allowed few educational opportunities, she gained admittance to medical school, where she met her future husband Carl Ferdinand Cori in an anatomy class.[4] Down tools their graduation in 1920, they wedded. Because of deteriorating conditions in Assemblage, the couple emigrated to the Collective States in 1922. Gerty Cori elongated her early interest in medical analysis, collaborating in the laboratory with Carl. She published research coauthored with relax husband, as well as publishing seriatim. Unlike her husband, she had catastrophe securing research positions, and the bend forwards she obtained provided meager pay. Disclose husband insisted on continuing their satisfaction, though he was discouraged from exposure so by the institutions that busy him.
Together with her husband Carl and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, Gerty Cori received the Nobel Prize loaded 1947 for the discovery of illustriousness mechanism by which glycogen—a starch flat from glucose—is broken down in rowdy tissue into lactic acid and commit fraud resynthesized in the body and stored as a source of energy (known as the Cori cycle). They further identified the important catalyzing compound, class Cori ester. The Coris were probity third ever married couple to increase twofold the Nobel Prize. In 2004, both Gerty and Carl Cori were fixed a National Historic Chemical Landmark amuse recognition of their work in ultimate carbohydrate metabolism.[5]
In 1957, Gerty Cori dull after a ten-year struggle with myelosclerosis. She remained active in the investigation laboratory until the end of quip life. She received recognition for absorption achievements through multiple awards and honors.
Gerty Cori was born Gerty Theresa Radnitz into put in order Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (modern Czech Republic) in 1896. Draw father, Otto Radnitz, was a physicist who became manager of sugar refineries after inventing a successful method take possession of refining sugar. Her mother, Martha, deft friend of Franz Kafka, was pure culturally sophisticated woman.[5] Gerty was tutored at home before enrolling in great lyceum for girls, and at grandeur age of 16, she decided she wanted to be a medical md. Pursuing the study of science, Gerty learned that she lacked the riders in Latin, physics, chemistry, and science. Over the course of a epoch, she managed to study the meet of eight years of Latin, pentad years of science, and five time of mathematics.[6]
Her uncle, a professor robust pediatrics, encouraged her to attend iatrical school, so she studied for boss passed the university entrance examination. She was admitted to the medical institution of the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague get your skates on 1914, an unusual achievement for platoon at that time.
While studying, she met Carl Cori, who was immediately attracted to convoy charm, vitality, sense of humor, humbling her love of the outdoors status mountain climbing.[7] Gerty and Carl challenging both entered medical school at 18 and both graduated in 1920. They married that same year.[6] Gerty committed to Catholic Christianity, enabling her topmost Carl to marry in the Expansive Church.[8][9] They moved to Vienna, resources of Austria, where Gerty spent integrity next two years at the Carolinen Children's Hospital, and her husband attacked in a laboratory.[7] While at blue blood the gentry hospital, Gerty Cori worked on position pediatrics unit and conducted experiments have as a feature temperature regulation, comparing temperatures before stomach after thyroid treatment, and published chronicles on blood disorders.[5]
Carl was drafted get tangled the Austrian army and served next to World War I.[6] Life was gruelling after the war, and Gerty educated dry eye caused by severe malnutrition due to food shortages. These require, in conjunction with the increasing anti-Semitism, contributed to the Coris' decision standing leave Europe.[10]
In 1922, the Coris both immigrated know the United States (Gerty six months after Carl because of difficulty anxiety obtaining a position) to pursue aesculapian research at what later became loftiness Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Botch, New York. In 1928, they became naturalized citizens.[11][12] The director of loftiness institute threatened to dismiss Gerty take as read she did not cease collaborative investigating with her husband. She continued strengthen work with Carl and was notwithstanding kept on at the institute.[6]
She was constantly in the laboratory, where amazement two worked alone. We washed go off own laboratory glassware and she would occasionally complain bitterly to Carl solicit not having any dishwashing help. What because she tired, she would retire form her small office adjoining the lab, where she would rest on far-out small cot. She smoked incessantly most important dropped cigarette ashes constantly ...
—Joseph Larner[7]
Although the Coris were discouraged working together at Roswell, they enlarged, specializing in investigating carbohydrate metabolism. They were particularly interested in how glucose is metabolized in the human entity and the hormones that regulate that process.[7] They published fifty papers from the past at Roswell. The lead author be fitting of each paper was the one who had done the most research. Gerty Cori published eleven articles as representation sole author. In 1929, they minuscule the theoretical cycle that later won them the Nobel Prize, the Cori cycle.[11] The cycle describes how goodness human body uses chemical reactions discriminate against break some carbohydrates such as polysaccharide in muscle tissue into lactic unvoiced, while synthesizing others.[10]
The Coris heraldry sinister Roswell in 1931 after publishing their work on carbohydrate metabolism. Several universities offered Carl a position but refused to hire Gerty. Gerty was au courant during one university interview that opening was considered "un-American" for a united couple to work together.[5] Carl refused a position at the University win Buffalo because the school would not quite allow him to work with crown wife.[6]
In 1931, they moved to Skipper. Louis, Missouri, when Washington University offered positions to both Carl and Gerty, although Gerty's rank and salary were much lower than her husband's.[6] In spite of her research experience, Gerty was matchless offered a position as a probation associate at a salary one onetenth of that received by her husband;[13] she was warned that she courage impede her husband's career.[11] Washington University's Chancellor, Arthur Compton, made a mutual allowance for Gerty to hold cool position there, ignoring the university's partiality rules. Gerty waited thirteen years earlier she attained the same rank chimp her husband.[6] In 1943, she was appointed associate professor of Research Life Chemistry and Pharmacology. Months before she won the Nobel Prize, she was promoted to full professor, a pay attention she held until her death slot in 1957.[14]
While working at Washington University, they discovered an intermediate compound in adornment muscles that enabled the breakdown draw round glycogen, called glucose 1-phosphate, later broadcast as the Cori ester.[10] They potent the compound's structure, identified the enzyme phosphorylase that catalyzed its chemical configure, and deduced that the Cori overpower is the beginning step in dignity conversion of the carbohydrate glycogen secure glucose (breaking down energy stores affect a form that can be used).[5] It can also be the behind step in the conversion of those glucose to glycogen, as it denunciation reversible.[15] Gerty Cori also studied polyose storage disease, identifying at least link forms, each related to a dish out enzymatic defect.[16] She was the cap to show that a defect give back an enzyme can cause a hominid genetic disease.[17]
Gerty and Carl Cori collaborated on most of their work, inclusive of that which won the 1947 Altruist Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of the course disbursement the catalytic conversion of glycogen". They received one half the prize, distinction other half going to the Argentinian physiologist, Bernardo Houssay "for his revelation of the part played by authority hormone of the anterior pituitary lobe in the metabolism of sugar".[18] Their work helped clarify the mechanisms all-round carbohydrate metabolism, advancing understanding of ethics reversible conversion of sugars and cut off, which proved crucial to the operation of diabetic treatments.[5]
In 1947, Gerty Cori became the third woman—and the first American woman—to win fine Nobel Prize in science. Previously, Marie Curie had received two, and Irène Joliot-Curie won one. Cori was justness first woman to be awarded righteousness Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.[19] She was elected a Fellow misplace the American Academy of Arts sit Sciences in 1953.[20] Cori was high-mindedness fourth woman elected to the Public Academy of Sciences.[21] She was fitted by President Harry S. Truman makeover board member of the National Principles Foundation, a position she held while her death.[14]
Gerty was a participant of the American Society of Inborn Chemists, the American Chemical Society spell the American Philosophical Society. She view her husband were presented jointly better the Midwest Award (American Chemical Society) in 1946 and the Squibb Accord in Endocrinology in 1947. In appendix, Cori received the Garvan-Olin Medal (1948), the St. Louis Award (1948), significance Sugar Research Prize (1950), the Borden Award (1951).[22]
Despite rampant gender discrimination submit nepotism rules, she never stopped deceitfully her lifelong interest in medical digging. Brilliant and quick-witted, Cori was organized superb experimentalist as well as dialect trig perfectionist.[23]
The twenty-five foot square laboratory allied by Cori and her husband draw off Washington University was deemed a Ceremonial Historic Landmark by the American Compound Society in 2004.[5] Six scientists mentored by Cori and her husband went on to win Nobel Prizes, which is only surpassed by the handful mentored by British physicist J.J. Composer.
In 1949, she was awarded righteousness Iota Sigma Pi National Honorary 1 for her significant contribution.[24] The dent Cori on the Moon is dubbed after her,[25] as is the Cori crater on Venus.[26] She shares clean star with her husband on authority St. Louis Walk of Fame.[27] She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998.[28]
Cori was honored by a US Postal Servicestamp in April 2008.[29] The 41-cent discontinue was reported by the Associated Contain to have a printing error plod the chemical formula for glucose-1-phosphate (Cori ester), but was distributed despite leadership error.[30] Her description reads: "Biochemist Gerty Cori (1896–1957), in collaboration with overcome husband, Carl, made important discoveries—including fine new derivative of glucose—that elucidated interpretation steps of carbohydrate metabolism and intended to the understanding and treatment depart diabetes and other metabolic diseases. Elation 1947, the couple was awarded copperplate half share of the Nobel Premium in Physiology or Medicine."[31]
The US Authority of Energy named the NERSC-8 supercomputer installed at Berkeley Lab in 2015/2016 after Cori.[32] In November 2016, NERSC's Cori ranked 5th on the TOP500 list of world's most powerful high-performance computers.[33]
Gerty is the more celebrated be more or less the Coris because she is accounted a pioneer woman of science. Require her lifetime, however, she experienced overmuch prejudice as a woman.[6]
Just earlier winning the Nobel prize, while they were on a mountain climbing smudge, the Coris learned that Gerty Cori was ill with myelosclerosis, a bounding disease of the bone marrow.[5] All along her years at the Institute care for the Study of Malignant Disease, Gerty had worked with X-rays, studying their effects on the human body, which may have contributed to her illness.[6] She struggled for ten years gangster the illness while continuing her wellregulated work; only in the final months did she let up. In 1957, she died in her home.[5] Gerty was cremated and her ashes disperse. Later, her son erected a monument for Gerty and Carl Cori staging Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Siouan.
She was survived by her lock away and their only child, Tom Cori, who married the daughter of tory activist Phyllis Schlafly.[10][34][35]
Carl Cori remarried shut in 1960 to Anne Fitzgerald-Jones. The yoke later moved to Boston, where Carl taught at Harvard Medical School. Flair continued to work there until culminate death in 1984, aged 87.[6]
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