Gerty Cori

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Gerty Cori and her husband, Dr. Carl Cori, were the first people to receive a Nobel Prize in science. Gerty Cori was special because not only was she the third woman to receive a Nobel Prize, but she was the first in America. She was born to the Radnitz family in Prague on August 15, 1896. Her family was among a group of German-speaking Jew’s in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her father, Otto Radnitz, carved an austere path for her career because he was an affluent chemist; managing a sugar-beet refining business. He had a rigorous work ethic and wanted what was best for his children. Cori’s uncle, a professor in the pediatrics field, inspired her to go to medical school. She applied and was accepted to the German University of Prague as one of the few female attendees.
In 1920, she and her soon to be husband at the time graduated with their M.D.’s. After graduating college, they were offered jobs to work in clinics in Vienna. Knowing that Europe would engage in war, they took measures into their own hands, and applied for jobs overseas in America. In 1922, they moved to New York, where Carl took a job at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases, and Gerty was hired as an assistant pathologist. Although they were discouraged from working with one another, they continued to anyways. They dedicated their work on how energy is created and transferred in the human body. Focusing in biochemistry, they began learning how glucose is metabolized. Gerty Cori influenced the modern world immensely with her various accomplishments and achievements throughout her lifetime such as the Cori Cycle and the Cori Ester.
When the Coris began to study carbohydrate metabolism, it was believed that glucose, a type of carbohydr...

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...mes glucose-1-phosphate through the completion of phosphorylase, an enzyme. Glucose-1-phosphate develops into glucose-6-phosphate through the action of phosphorylase, which is another enzyme. Glucose-6-phosphate turns into glucose, and glucose turns into lactic acid, each step in turn interceded by one precise enzyme. The Coris' work improved the way scientists thought about reactions in the human body, and it advised that there were explicit, enzyme-driven reactions for many of the biochemical conversions that institutes life.

Works Cited

http://www.essaywizards.com/biographies/Gerty-T.-Cori-29623.html http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/05/cori-cycle.html https://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_69.html http://www.chemspider.com/Search.aspx?rid=e17d4638-c59b-4a06-92dc-415fc1456cd6 http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Gerty_T._Cori.aspx

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