MEYERHOF, OTTO

MEYERHOF, OTTO (1884–1951), German biochemist and Nobel Prize winner. Meyerhof, who was born in Hanover, was first concerned with psychology (he wrote a book Contributions to a Psychological Theory of Mental Diseases) and philosophy (he edited a journal Abhandlungen der Friesschen Schule, mainly for neo-Kantian philosophers), and worked in Krehl's clinic and at the Marine Zoological Laboratory in Naples. In 1913 he joined the University of Kiel, where he became professor of physiological chemistry (1918–24). In 1923 Meyerhof was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine (shared with A.V. Hill) "for his discovery of the fixed relationship between the consumption of oxygen and the metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle." An associated phenomenon is known as the Pasteur-Meyerhof effect. In 1924 Meyerhof became head of a division in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology in Berlin-Dahlem, and in 1929 head of the department of physiology in the Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. He elucidated the roll played by ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in energy transfer in biological systems and introduced the term "energy coupling." He was forced to leave Germany in 1938, and became director of research at the Institut de Biologie Physicochimique in Paris. When the Germans conquered France, he escaped, first to southern France, and then to America. He then became research professor of physiological chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Nachmansohn, in: Science, 115 (1952), 365–8; idem, in: Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 4 (1950), 1–3; T.N. Levitan, Laureates: Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize (1960), 124–7. (Samuel Aaron Miller)