Fritz Albert Lipmann (; June 12, 1899 – July 24, 1986) was a German-American

biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of "biological ch ...

and a co-discoverer in 1945 of

coenzyme A Coenzyme A (CoA, SHCoA, CoASH) is a coenzyme, notable for its role in the synthesis and oxidation of fatty acids, and the oxidation of pyruvate in the citric acid cycle. All genomes sequenced to date encode enzymes that use coenzyme A as a subs ...

. For this, together with other research on coenzyme A, he was awarded the

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accordi ...

in 1953 (shared with

Hans Adolf Krebs Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, FRS (, ; 25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-born British biologist, physician and biochemist. He was a pioneer scientist in the study of cellular respiration, a biochemical process in living cells that ex ...

Early life and education

Lipmann was born in

Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was ...

, Germany, to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family. His parents were Gertrud (Lachmanski) and Leopold Lipmann, an attorney. Lipmann studied medicine at the

University of Königsberg The University of Königsberg (german: Albertus-Universität Königsberg) was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as the world's second Protestant academy (after the University of Marburg) by Duke Albert of Pruss ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, and

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

, graduating in Berlin in 1924. He returned to Königsberg to study chemistry under Professor

Hans Meerwein Hans Meerwein (May 20, 1879 in Hamburg, Germany – October 24, 1965 in Marburg, Germany) was a German chemist. Several reactions and reagents bear his name, most notably the Meerwein–Ponndorf–Verley reduction, the Wagner–Meerwein rearr ...

. In 1926 he joined

Otto Meyerhof Otto Fritz Meyerhof (; April 12, 1884 – October 6, 1951) was a German physician and biochemist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Biography Otto Fritz Meyerhof was born in Hannover, at Theaterplatz 16A (now:Rathenaustrasse ...

at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Dahlem, Berlin, for his doctoral thesis. After that he followed Meyerhof to

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...

to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research.

Career

From 1939 on, Lipmann lived and worked in the United States. He was a Research Associate in the Department of Biochemistry,

Cornell University Medical College The Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is Cornell University's biomedical research unit and medical school located in Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Weill Cornell Medicine is affiliated with NewY ...

, New York from 1939 to 1941. He joined the research staff of the

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

in Boston in 1941, first as a Research Associate in the Department of Surgery, then heading his own group in the Biochemical Research Laboratory of the hospital. From 1949 to 1957 he was professor of

biological chemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is cons ...

. From 1957 onwards, he taught and conducted research at

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. In 1953, Lipmann received one half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine "for his discovery of co-enzyme A and its importance for intermediary metabolism." The other half of the award was won by

. Lipmann was awarded the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

in 1966. He would try to dive further into his discovery by finding a variant of co-enzyme A, now known as

Pantethine Pantethine (bis-pantethine or co-enzyme pantethine) is a dimeric form of pantetheine, which is produced from pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) by the addition of cysteamine. Pantethine was discovered by Gene Brown, a PhD student at the time. Panteth ...

. He was an elected member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, the United States

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

, and the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

. Lipmann introduced the specific squiggle designation (~) to indicate high energy-rich phosphate in energy-rich biomolecules like ATP in his essay "Metabolic Generation and Utilization of Phosphate Bond Energy." Of his work, he said "that in the field of biosynthesis we have a rare example of progress leading to simplification."

Personal life

In 1931, Lipmann married Elfreda M. Hall. They had one son. Lipmann died in New York in 1986.FRITZ A. LIPMAN, BIOCHEMIST, DIES
''New York Times'' (August 16, 1986) His widow died in 2008 at the age of 101.

References

External links

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jewish virtual library biographyLeibniz Institute for Age Research – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI)National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lipmann, Fritz Albert 1899 births 1986 deaths Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine American Nobel laureates German Nobel laureates American biochemists Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Jewish American scientists Jewish chemists Scientists from Königsberg People from East Prussia University of Königsberg alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Physicians of the Charité Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Heidelberg University alumni Harvard Medical School faculty National Medal of Science laureates Foreign Members of the Royal Society Rockefeller University people Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Members of the American Philosophical Society

Early life and education

Career

Personal life

See also

References

External links