German biochemists

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, FRS (, German: [hans ˈʔaːdɔlf ˈkʁeːps] ; 25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-British biologist, physician and biochemist. He was a pioneer scientist in the study of cellular respiration, a biochemical process in living cells that extracts energy from food and oxygen and makes it available to drive the processes of life. He is best known for his discoveries of two important sequences of chemical reactions that take place in the cells of nearly all organisms, including humans, other than anaerobic microorganisms, namely the citric acid cycle and the urea cycle. The former, often eponymously known as the "Krebs cycle", is the sequence of metabolic reactions that allows cells of oxygen-respiring organisms to obtain far more ATP from the food they consume than anaerobic processes such as glycolysis can supply; and its discovery earned Krebs a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953. With Hans Kornberg, he also discovered the glyoxylate cycle, a slight variation of the citric acid cycle found in plants, bacteria, protists, and fungi.
Krebs died in 1981 in Oxford, where he had spent 13 years of his career from 1954 until his retirement in 1967 at the University of Oxford.

Rudolf Schoenheimer (May 10, 1898 – September 11, 1941) was a German-American biochemist who developed the technique of isotope labelling/tagging of biomolecules, enabling detailed study of metabolism. This work revealed that all the constituents of an organism are in a constant state of chemical renewal.Born in Berlin, after graduating in medicine from the Friedrich Wilhelm University there, he learned further organic chemistry at the University of Leipzig and then studied biochemistry at the University of Freiburg where he rose to be Head of Physiological Chemistry.He spent the 1930-31 academic year at the University of Chicago.In 1933, following the rise of the Nazis to power he emigrated from Germany to the Columbia University to join the department of Biological Chemistry. Working with David Rittenberg, from the radiochemistry laboratory of Harold C. Urey and later together with Konrad Bloch, they used stable isotopes to tag foodstuffs and trace their metabolism within living things.He further established that cholesterol is a risk factor in atherosclerosis.He suffered from manic depression all of his life, which led to him in 1941 committing suicide using cyanide. He had been honoured with the request to give the Dunham Lecture at Harvard before his death. It was read for him following his death.

Alfred Gottschalk (22 April 1894 – 4 October 1973) was a German biochemist who was a leading authority in glycoprotein research. During his career he wrote 216 research papers and reviews, and four

books.Gottschalk was born in Aachen, the third of four children to Benjamin and Rosa Gottschalk, who had Jewish heritage. He was raised Catholic. He choose to study medicine, from 1912 he attended the Universities of Munich, Freiburg im Breisgau and Bonn. During the war he served in the medical corps of the German Army. He completed his medical degree in 1920, graduating MD from the University of Bonn. He completed clinical work experience at the medical schools of Frankfurt am Main and Würzburg and physiology-biochemistry studies at Bonn, that led to his first publications, an award from the University of Madrid and an invitation to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Experimental Therapy and Biochemistry with Carl Neuberg.
In 1923 he married Lisbeth Berta Orgler; together they had one son. They separated in 1950. Gottschalk left the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry in 1926 to become Director of the Biochemical Department at the General Hospital in Stettin. He left the hospital in 1934 following upheaval in Nazi Germany and entered private practice, left for England in the spring of 1939, and on to Melbourne in July. He was offered a position as a biochemist by Charles Kellaway, director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI). He initially worked with yeast enzymes and fermentation, but in 1947 he joined the virus department, where he worked with Frank Macfarlane Burnet. He also taught biochemistry and organic chemistry at the Melbourne Technical College and later at the University of Melbourne. In 1945 he became a naturalized British citizen. In 1949 he received a DSc from the University of Melbourne.
He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1954. He discovered viral neuraminidase there in 1957. As Burnet stated: “In the world of biochemistry the most important contribution of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute is regarded as Gottschalk’s discovery of the structure of the sialic acids and his recognition that an enzyme which I had characterised biologically was chemically a neuraminidase. Gottschalk’s work was masterly and it was definitive.”On his retirement in 1959, he was invited by his friend and former WEHI colleague Frank Fenner to research at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. He returned to Germany in 1963, where he was appointed Guest-Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tübingen. He continued active research and for his contributions to science was elected to the Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1967 and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Münster (MD) in 1969.
He died in Tübingen on 4 October 1973. The Gottschalk Medal for medical research awarded by the Australian Academy of Science is named in his honour.