ACS Chemistry for Life

Fritz Albert Lipmannwas born on June 12th, 1899, at Koenigsberg, Germany. Lipmann was educated, during the years 1917-1922, at the Universities of Koenigsberg, Berlin, and Munich, where he studied medicine. He took his M.D. degree in 1924 at Berlin. He was, during his pre-clinical year of medical study, strongly impressed by what he has called “a dramatic chemistry course” given by Professor Klinger at Koenigsberg. Later, he took a primer course in biochemistry given in Berlin by Professor Rona and in 1923 he definitely took up biochemistry.

Feeling then the need for further study of chemistry, Lipmann returned to Koenigsberg to study chemistry under Professor Hans Meerwein, who had then succeeded Professor Klinger. In 1926 he went as an assistant in Otto Meyerhof’s laboratory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin, to prepare a thesis for the degree of Ph.D., Berlin, which he took in 1927.

When he went to Copenhagen in 1932, as Research Associate in the Biological Institute of the Carlsberg Foundation there, Lipmann became interested in the metabolism of fibroblasts and this prompted him to investigate the Pasteur effect, which led to important papers on the mechanism of this reaction and on the part played by glycolysis in the metabolism of the cells of embryos.

In 1939 Lipmann became Research Associate in the Department of Biochemistry, Cornell Medical School, New York, and in 1941 joined the research staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, first as a Research Associate in the Department of Surgery, then heading his own group in the Biochemical Research Laboratory of the Hospital. In 1949 he became Professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School, Boston. In 1957, he was appointed a Member and Professor of the Rockefeller Institute, New York.

Visit the official web site of the Nobel Foundation to read more about Fritz Lipmann.

Excerpted with permission, www.nobelprize.org