Hans Krebs

Facts

Hans Adolf Krebs

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Hans Adolf Krebs
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1953

Born: 25 August 1900, Hildesheim, Germany

Died: 22 November 1981, Oxford, United Kingdom

Affiliation at the time of the award: Sheffield University, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Prize motivation: “for his discovery of the citric acid cycle”

Prize share: 1/2

Work

Nutrients are broken down in our cells to release energy for the construction of cells. After Albert Szent-Györgyi identified several important reactions in these metabolic processes, in 1937 Hans Krebs was able to present a complete picture of an important part of metabolism—the citric acid cycle. In this process, which is cyclical and has several steps, nutrients are converted to other molecules with a large amount of chemical energy. The latter are ultimately converted into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which provides chemical energy to facilitate other biochemical processes in the cell.

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