KREBS, SIR HANS ADOLF

KREBS, SIR HANS ADOLF (1900–1981), British biochemist and Nobel Prize winner. Krebs was born in Hildesheim, Germany, and pursued research with otto heinrich warburg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin for four years, subsequently working at Professor Thannhauser's clinic at Freiburg. He worked out the cyclic process for urea synthesis in the liver. Forced to leave Germany with the advent of Hitler, Krebs became a research fellow in the department of biochemistry at Cambridge. In 1935 he joined Sheffield University, where he became professor of biochemistry in 1945. In 1954 he was appointed professor of biochemistry at Oxford University. In 1953 Krebs received the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology (which he shared with fritz lipmann ) for his discovery of the citric acid cycle. This is the sequence of processes by which foodstuffs are converted in the living cell into carbon dioxide, water, and energy. The "Krebs cycle" was first elucidated for pigeon-breast muscle, but is known to apply to most living cells of aerobic organisms. Krebs was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947 and was knighted in 1958. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: T.N. Levitan, The Laureates: Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize (1960), 169–72. (Samuel Aaron Miller)