Konrad Bloch

Facts

Konrad Bloch

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Konrad Bloch
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1964

Born: 21 January 1912, Neisse (now Nysa), Germany (now Poland)

Died: 15 October 2000, Burlington, MA, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Prize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism."

Prize share: 1/2

Work

Cholesterol is an important component in the body's cells and plays a major role in several biochemical processes. Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen and their respective colleagues investigated how cholesterol and fatty acids are formed and converted in the body. Among other things, they showed that acetic acid is an important component in cholesterol and how the formation occurs in reactions with many steps. This knowledge is important for an understanding of heart disease and other illnesses in which changes in cholesterol formation can play a role.

To cite this section
MLA style: Konrad Bloch – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Sat. 22 Feb 2020. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1964/bloch/facts/>

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