Carl Ferdinand Cori | Biography

Carl Ferdinand Cori and his wife, biochemist Gerty T. Cori, were prominent researchers in physiology, pharmacology, and biology. Their most important work involved carbohydrate metabolism (especially in tumors), phosphate processes in the muscles, the process of glucose-glycogen interconversion , and the action of insulin. The Coris shared the 1947 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine (along with the Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay ) "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen."

Cori was born on December 5, 1896, in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His parents were Carl Isidor Cori, a professor of zoology at the German University of Prague, and Maria Lippich Cori. When Cori was still young, the family moved to Trieste, Italy, where his father had been appointed director of the Marine Biology Station. Cori studied at the Gymnasium in Trieste from 1906 to 1914, and then returned to Prague and began medical studies at the German University. His studies, however, were interrupted by World War I; serving in the Austrian army, he worked in hospitals for infectious diseases on the Italian front.

It was during his first term at the University of Prague that Cori met his wife, who was also a medical student. Described as redheaded and vivacious, Gerty Theresa Radnitz was the daughter of a Prague businessman and a lifelong resident of that city. As medical students, the Coris coauthored their first scientific publication; ultimately, they would publish over two hundred research articles together. They were married on August 5, 1920, shortly after receiving their medical doctorates.

From 1920 to 1922, Cori served first as a researcher at the First Medical Clinic in Vienna, Austria, and then in the same capacity at Austria's University of Graz. During this time, his wife worked as an assistant at a children's hospital in Vienna. In 1922, Cori accepted a position at the New York State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo. Gerty Cori joined him soon thereafter, and they continued their research together. During this period, the Coris were studying carbohydrate metabolism, particularly in tumor cells. They also researched the effects of the surgical removal of the ovaries on the incidence of tumors.

The Coris became American citizens in 1928, and in 1931 they accepted positions at the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where Cori was to remain until 1966. Their research on carbohydrate metabolism now centered on glucose, or "blood sugar," the energy source for animal life. They developed methods to analyze the relationship of glucose to glycogen, the starchlike form in which glucose is stored in the liver and muscles. In the 1930s, the Coris performed groundbreaking research on the biochemical processes involved in the interconversion of glucose to glycogen, a process now called the Cori cycle. This interconversion is responsible for maintaining the blood sugar at a constant level.

In 1936, the Coris isolated glucose-1-phosphate, now known as the Cori ester, which is involved in the formation and breakdown of glycogen. The Coris also analyzed the function of insulin, a hormone in the pancreas that is vital to the body's processing of glucose. In 1938, the Coris analyzed the conversion of glucose-1-phosphate to glucose-6-phosphate. Then, in 1943, they isolated phosphorylase, an enzyme important to the glucose-glycogen interconversion, in crystalline form. The Coris were able in 1944 to synthesize glycogen in a test tube, the first such synthesis of a high molecular substance.

Cori was appointed professor of biochemistry at Washington University in 1944, and two years later he became chairman of the department. In 1947, he and his wife were awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for their research on the relationship between glucose and glycogen. This led to many comparisons in the press between the Coris and the first husband-and-wife team to win the Nobel Prize, Pierre and Marie Curie.

In addition to sharing the Nobel Prize in 1947, Cori received numerous awards and honors, including the Isaac Adler Prize from Harvard University in 1944, the Midwest Award of the American Chemical Society in 1945, and the Harry M. Lasker Award of the American Society for the Control of Cancer in 1946. He also received the Squibb Award of the Society of Endocrinologists, which was bestowed on him along with his wife in 1947, and the Willard Gibbs Medal of the American Chemical Society in 1948. Cori received honorary degrees from Cambridge, Yale, and other universities, and was a member of various scientific societies.

In the same year they won the Nobel Prize, his wife was diagnosed with myelosclerosis, a disease of the blood. She died ten years later, on October 26, 1957, of complications from the disease, and Cori suffered the loss of both wife and scientific partner. They had one child, a son, Carl Thomas Cori. Cori subsequently remarried, wedding Anne Fitzgerald Jones on March 23, 1960. In 1966, after retiring from Washington University, Cori served as a visiting professor at the Harvard University School of Medicine. Cori died on October 20, 1984, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Recent Updates

September 13, 2004: It was announced that Carl and Gerty Cori's research exploring how the human body metabolizes glucose will be designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a ceremony at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in late September of 2004. The landmark program is sponsored by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Source: EurekAlert, www.eurekalert.org, September 13, 2004.