This finding helped clarify earlier work that had been inconclusive on associating growth with increased consumption of oxygen and energy. A number of years later, Warburg did some similar tests of oxygen consumption by cancer cells.
World War I Interrupts Research
Warburg was elected in 1913 to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, a prestigious scientific institute whose members had the freedom to pursue whatever studies they wished. He had just begun his work at the institute when World War I started. He volunteered for the army and joined the Prussian Horse Guards, a cavalry unit that fought on the Russian front. Warburg survived the war and returned to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin in 1918. Now 35 years old, he would devote the rest of his life to biological research, concentrating on studies of energy transfer in cells (cancerous or otherwise) and photosynthesis.
One of Warburg's significant contributions to biology was the development of a manometer for monitoring cell respiration. He adapted a device originally designed to measure gases dissolved in blood so it would make measurements of the rate of oxygen production in living cells. In related work, Warburg devised a technique for preparing thin slices of intact, living tissue and keeping the samples alive in a nutrient medium.
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