1930

Biographical

Karl Landsteiner was born in Vienna on June 14, 1868. His father, Leopold Landsteiner, a doctor of law, was a well-known journalist and newspaper publisher, who died when Karl was six years old. Karl was brought up by his mother, Fanny Hess, to whom he was so devoted that a death mask of her hung…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Professor G. Hedrén, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine of the , on December 10, 1930 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thirty years ago, in 1900, in the course of his serological studies Landsteiner observed that when, under normal physiological conditions, blood serum of a human…

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Biographical

Hans Fischer was born in July 27, 1881 at Hoechst, on the river Main, in Germany. His father was Dr. Eugen Fischer, Director of the firm of Kalle & Co, Wiesbaden, and Privatdozent at the Technical High School, Stuttgart; his mother was Anna Herdegen. He went to a primary school in Stuttgart, and later to…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Professor H.G. Söderbaum, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of , on December 10, 1930 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. “Blood is a very special liquid”, this was asserted some 140 years ago by Goethe. When writing these words and ascribing them to Mephistopheles he probably had in…

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Speed read

Two of the most fundamental processes in life, the transport of oxygen by blood in animals and the absorption of light during photosynthesis in plants, rely on pigments to carry out their highly important missions. Hans Fischer received the 1930 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing how Nature constructs these different coloured pigments from the…

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