Animals, including humans, are constantly on the go. Where do they get the energy? A husband-and-wife team, Carl and Gerty Cori, identified the cyclical process that muscle cells use to make and store energy, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work. Understanding this process of sugar metabolism—called the Cori cycle—is particularly important for treating diabetes, a condition in which the cycle is disrupted.

Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896–1984) and Gerty Theresa Cori (1896–1957) were great scientific collaborators. The two spent their lives researching carbohydrates and the chemical reactions that the body uses to break down certain carbohydrates and synthesize others. They were especially interested in the class of carbohydrates known as sugars. Among other remarkable feats they discovered “the Cori ester,” a breakdown product of glycogen (the form in which sugar is stored in muscles), and they were able to reverse this reaction in a test tube, forming glycogen again.

Two Prague Natives



Carl Cori was also born in Prague, into a Roman Catholic family that had produced generations of scientists. He grew up and was educated in traditional schools in Trieste (now in Italy, but then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), where his father was head of the Marine Biological Station.





Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine

After World War I: Vienna, then America



Washington University and the Nobel Prize

The two stayed in Buffalo until 1931, when Carl left to become a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Gerty was hired too, as a research associate, despite her equivalent degrees and comparable research experience. It was not until 1943 that she was promoted to a faculty position. She became full professor in 1947, the same year that she and Carl were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen.” Gerty was the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize.

