Fritz Lipmann
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Fritz Albert Lipmann
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1953
Born: 12 June 1899, Koenigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
Died: 24 July 1986, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
Prize motivation: “for his discovery of co-enzyme A and its importance for intermediary metabolism”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
In 1937 Hans Krebs presented a complete picture of an important part of metabolism—the citric acid cycle. In this process, which has several steps, nutrients are converted to other molecules with a large amount of chemical energy. An important piece of the process was still missing—a substance that along with a protein forms an enzyme that facilitates an important step. In 1946 the substance was discovered by Fritz Lipmann, who described its role plays and gave it the name coenzyme A.
Streams during Nobel Week
Watch the 2025 Nobel Prize lectures, Nobel Week Dialogue, the prize award ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm and Nobel Peace Prize Forum here at nobelprize.org.
