Muscle Research at Kiel
In 1912 Meyerhof became an assistant in the department of physiology in the University of Kiel and in 1918 assistant professor. In 1913 he delivered a lecture on the energetics of cell phenomena which became a classic, and he published (1916-1917) three papers on energy exchanges in the nitrifying bacteria, which papers had an important influence on his own work.
Meyerhof was interested in the mechanism by which the energy of the foodstuffs is released and utilized by the living cell. He investigated muscle, because in it energy is released as heat and also as mechanical work. Louis Pasteur held that the yeast cell's need for chemical energy could be satisfied either by oxidation of sugar or by its chemical cleavage. Hence arose the theory that the yeast cell used "intramolecular oxygen," derived from the organic molecules and not from the molecular oxygen of the atmosphere. In 1867 Ludimar Hermann found that muscle can contract in the absence of oxygen, and he thought that muscle contained the hypothetical "inogen" whose molecules had the excess oxygen that was used, by a process analogous to fermentation, for the liberation of energy during muscular activity.
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