Abstract
THE University of Sheffield has conferred on Dr. H. A. Krebs the title and status of professor of biochemistry in recognition of his eminence in the world of science. Dr. Krebs was awarded the degree of M.D. (Hamburg) in 1925 and that of M.A. (Cambridge) in 1935. He held the post of research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin-Dahlem, during 1926–30 under Prof. Otto Warburg. After further experience in Germany he became a Rockefeller research student in the Biochemical Laboratory, Cambridge (1933–34), demonstrator in biochemistry at Cambridge (1934–35) and lecturer in pharmacology at Sheffield (1935–38). In 1938 he was appointed lecturer in charge of the newly created Department of Biochemistry in Sheffield, and attracted to his department research workers from both Europe and America. He is a naturalized British subject, and during the War he has given valuable service in connexion with diet and nutrition. His main contributions to biochemistry are in the field of intermediary metabolism. He showed that the synthesis of urea in the mammalian liver is catalysed by ornithine. This observation led to the formulation of the 'Ornithine cycle', according to which ornithine, citrulline and arginine are intermediate stages in the synthesis of urea. His work on the oxidation of carbohydrate in muscle showed that this metabolic process, too, is a cyclic one (known as the 'Krebs cycle'), where a series of organic acids arises periodically.
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Chair of Biochemistry at Sheffield: Prof. H. A. Krebs. Nature 155, 358 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155358b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155358b0