Carl Ferdinand Cori
Carl Ferdinand Cori (
December 5,
1896 –
October 20,
1984) was an
American biochemist born in
Prague (then in
Austria-Hungary) who, together with his wife
Gerty Cori and Argentine physiologist
Bernardo Houssay, received a
Nobel Prize in
1947 for their discovery of how
glycogen (animal starch) - a derivative of
glucose - is broken down and resynthesized in the body, for use as a store and source of energy.
Carl was the son of Carl Cori, a physician, and Martha Lippich, he grew up in
Trieste where his father was the director of the Marine Biological Station. In late
1914 the Cori family moved to
Prague and Carl entered the medical school (at the German part) of the
Charles University. While studying there he met
Gerty Theresa Radnitz. He was drafted into the
Austro-Hungarian Army and served in the ski corps, and later was transferred to the sanitary corps, for which he set up a laboratory in Trieste. At the end of the war Carl completed his studies, graduating with Gerty in
1920. Carl and Gerty married that year and worked together in clinics in
Vienna.
Carl was invited to Graz to work with
Otto Loewi to study the effect of the vagus nerve on the
heart, Loewi would receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
1936 for this work. While Carl was in Graz, Gerty remained in Vienna. A year later Carl was offered a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases (now the
Roswell Park Cancer Institute) in Buffalo, New York and the Cori's moved to Buffalo.
While at the Institute the Cori's research focussed on
carbohydrate metabolism, leading to the definition of the
Cori cycle in
1929, for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947. In
1928, they became
naturalized citizens of the United States. In
1931 Carl accepted a position at the
Washington University School of Medicine in
St. Louis, Missouri. Carl joined as professor of pharmacology and in
1942 was made professor of biochemistry.
In 1946, he won the
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.
Gerty died in
1957, Carl married Anne Fitz-Gerald Jones in
1960. Carl stayed on at Washington University until 1966, when he retired as chair of the biochemistry department. Following retirement Cori moved to
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Harvard University laboratory space at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he pursued research in genetics.
Carl shares a star with Gerti on the
St. Louis Walk of Fame.
*Ihde, A.J. Cori, Carl Ferdinand, and Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori. American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
*
Nobel Prize biography
