Konrad E. Bloch

Konrad Emil Bloch (; 21 January 1912 – 15 October 2000) was a German-American biochemist. Bloch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964 (joint with Feodor Lynen) for discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.Konrad E. Bloch
Encyclopaedia Britannica

Life and career

Bloch was born in Neisse (Nysa), in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia. He was the second child of middle-class parents Hedwig (Striemer) and Frederich D. "Fritz" Bloch. He was a student Carolinum in Nysa and then 1930 to 1934, he studied chemistry at the Technical University of Munich. In 1934, due to the Nazi persecutions of Jews, he fled to the ''Schweizerische Forschungsinstitut'' in Davos, Switzerland, before moving to the United States in 1936. Later he was appointed to the department of biological chemistry at Yale Medical School.

In the United States, Bloch enrolled at Columbia University, and received a PhD in biochemistry in 1938. He taught at Columbia from 1939 to 1946. From there he went to the University of Chicago and then to Harvard University as Higgins Professor of Biochemistry in 1954, a post he held until 1982. From 1979 until 1984, he was a professor of science at their School of Public Health. After retirement at Harvard, he served as the Mack and Effie Campbell Tyner Eminent Scholar Chair in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University.

Bloch shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964 with his compatriat Feodor Lynen, for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism. Their work showed that the body first makes squalene from acetate over many steps and then converts the squalene to cholesterol. He traced all the carbon atoms in cholesterol back to acetate. Some of his research was conducted using radioactive acetate in bread mold: this was possible because fungi also produce squalene. He confirmed his results using rats. He was one of several researchers who showed that acetyl Coenzyme A is turned into mevalonic acid. Both Bloch and Lynen then showed that mevalonic acid is converted into chemically active isoprene, the precursor to squalene. Bloch also discovered that bile and a female sex hormone were made from cholesterol, which led to the discovery that all steroids were made from cholesterol., quoted by Larry Moran at Sandwalk blog in "Nobel Laureates: Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen," 2007-11-21. His Nobel Lecture was "The Biological Synthesis of Cholesterol."

In 1985, Bloch became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1988, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Bloch and his wife Lore Teutsch first met in Munich. They married in the U.S. in 1941. They had two children, Peter Conrad Bloch and Susan Elizabeth Bloch, and two grandchildren, Benjamin Nieman Bloch and Emilie Bloch Sondel. They lived for many decades in the mid-century modern enclave Six Moon Hill in Lexington, Massachusetts . He was fond of skiing, tennis, and music. Konrad died in Burlington, Massachusetts of congestive heart failure in 2000, aged 88. Lore Bloch died in 2010 aged 98.Lore Bloch Obituary - Lexington, MA , Boston Globe
Legacy.com (2010-02-21). Retrieved on 2020-07-31.

See also

* '' Biology Today'', college-level biology textbook, contribution by Bloch
* List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

External links

*
* Konrad Bloch, Nobel Lecture
The biological synthesis of cholesterol
11 December 1964
* Eugene P. Kennedy
«Konrad Bloch»
Biographical Memoirs – ''Proceedings'' of the ''American Philosophical Society'' (vol. 147, no. 1, 2003, pp. 67–72)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Konrad Emil
Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
American Nobel laureates
German Nobel laureates
20th-century American biochemists
20th-century German biologists
German biochemists
Jewish American scientists
Jewish German scientists
Jewish chemists
Kolegium Carolinum Neisse alumni
Columbia University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Florida State University faculty
Harvard School of Public Health faculty
University of Chicago faculty
National Medal of Science laureates
People from Lexington, Massachusetts
People from the Province of Silesia
Technical University of Munich alumni
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
German emigrants to the United States
People from Nysa, Poland
Silesian Jews
1912 births
2000 deaths
Members of the American Philosophical Society