The Swedish biochemist Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell (1903-1982) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the nature and mode of action of oxidation enzymes.

Hugo Theorell, the son of Ture Theorell, a medical practitioner, was born at Linköping on July 6, 1903. From 1921 he studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute at Stockholm and graduated as a bachelor of medicine in 1924. He soon became an assistant in the Institute of Medical Chemistry at Stockholm, and there he was temporary associate professor in 1928-1929. In 1930 he graduated as a doctor of medicine and was appointed lecturer in physiological chemistry at the Karolinska Institute.

In 1931, while working in Svedberg's Institute of Physical Chemistry in Uppsala, Theorell was the first to obtain crystalline myoglobin, and he determined its chemical and physical properties. In 1932 he became associate professor of medical and physiological chemistry in the University of...