Otto Meyerhof

Meyerhof, Otto 

Born Apr. 12, 1884, in Hanover; died Oct. 6, 1951, in Philadelphia, Pa. German biochemist; member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1949).

Meyerhof was educated in Freiburg, Berlin, Strasbourg, and Heidelberg, where in 1909 he defended his dissertation and received the degree of doctor of medicine. Between 1912 and 1938 he worked in Kiel, Berlin-Dalem, and Heidelberg. In 1938 he emigrated from fascist Germany. He was in Paris from 1938 to 1940. He became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1940.

Meyerhof s principal works dealt with the biochemistry of muscle contraction. He investigated enzymic conversions of carbohydrates and the associated conversions of adenosine triphosphate and phosphocreatine. He described the connection between the anaerobic decomposition and aerobic synthesis of carbohydrates in working and resting muscles (the Pasteur-Meyerhof cycle) and showed that the energy released in chemical conversions of carbohydrates is used in muscle contraction. Meyerhof was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1922. He was a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and an honorary member of a number of foreign academies and societies.

WORKS

Die chemischen Vorgange in Muskel und ihr Zusammenhang mil Arbeitsleistung und Wdrmebildung. Berlin, 1930.
In Russian translation:
Khimicheskaia dinamika zhiznennykh iavlenii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926.
Termodinamika zhiznennykh protsessov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1928.