Hans von Euler-Chelpin
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1929
Born: 15 February 1873, Augsburg, Germany
Died: 6 November 1964, Stockholm, Sweden
Affiliation at the time of the award: Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Prize motivation: “for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
The fermentation of sugar to form alcohol is the basis for bread, beer, and wine. Once Eduard Buchner discovered that fermentation is powered by chemical substances, yeast enzymes, which are formed by yeast fungi, the task became to elucidate the details of the process. After Arthur Harden demonstrated that the process requires both a main yeast enzyme and a coenzyme and that phosphoric acid plays an important role in the process, Hans von Euler-Chelpin and his associates were able to develop an even more detailed understanding of the process in the 1910s and 1920s.
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