Hans Kreb Sir Hans Adolf

Hans Kreb

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, the Nobel-prize winning Medical Physiologist, was born in 1900, the son of a surgeon in Hildesheim, Germany. As a child he was educated in the local school and when he was 18, went to the Universities of Gottingen, Berlin and Freiburg-im-Breisgau. He got his M.D. degree in one year from the Third Medical Clinic of the University of Berlin and went on to study chemistry in Berlin. He was a professor's assistant in Berlin-Dahlem until 1930.

After working in hospitals and clinics in Germany until 1933, he went to England, to take a post at Cambridge, where he stayed until 1935. He married Margaret Cecily Fiedhause in Wickersley in 1938 and had 2 sons and a daughter. He lectured in Pharmacology and Biochemistry at the University of Sheffield until 1945, when he became a professor and Director of Medical Research at Oxford.

His area of research was in various aspects of intermediary metabolism, such as the synthesis of urea in the mammalian liver. He also researched synthesis of uric acid, the purine bases in birds, the oxidation of foodstuffs, the active transport of electrolytes and the relationship between the generation of adenosine polyphosphates and cell respiration. As a result of his research, he wrote several books, including one on energy transformations in living things, which was published in 1957 in collaboration with H.L. Kornberg (Krebs 1964 5). This book discusses complex processes that provide living organisms with phosphate through the citric acid cycle or what is known as the Krebs cycle (Nobel 1953).

After winning many honors, in 1947, 1954 and 1958, he was knighted in 1958. He also received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago, Frieburg-im-Breisgau, Paris, Glasgow, London, Sheffield, Leicester, Berlin (Humbolt University) and Jerusalem. He died on November 22, 1981, at the age of 81.

Han Krebs received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1953. In a quote from his Nobel Lecture in December of that year, he explained his attraction to the study of how living organisms survive, including how cells oxidize sugar.

I felt greatly attracted by the problem of the intermediary pathway of oxidations. These reactions represent the main energy source in higher organisms, and in view of the importance of energy production to living organisms (whose activities all depend on a continuous supply of energy) the problem seemed well worthwhile studying (Krebs 1953 1).

Through his study of oxidation and the enzymatic processes, he accomplished a major achievement, discovering the citric acid cycle as a way of oxidizing carbohydrate. The cycle breaks down fatty acids and creates other substances. The cycle is present in all forms of life from the single cell bacteria and protozoa up to complex mammals. The discovery of this common way of creating energy among life forms may help explain the origin of all forms of life in the evolutionary process. His discovery may also be utilized in creating new sources of energy and transforming one kind of foodstuff which may be useless, such as orange peels, into useful food sources, such as dog food (which is now done). Enzymes speed up biochemical processes, so may be used in antibiotics that fight infection, and household cleaners that break down fat in stains or on surfaces. Enzymes are used in meat tenderizers, as well as in drugs or pest poisons, available commercially (Denton 30).