Kind of chilly here for a THURSDAY

On this day in 1947, Carl and Gerty Cori, along with Bernardo Houssay of Argentina, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Coris were the third married couple to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

Carl grew up in Trieste and Gerty grew up in Prague. Gerty was tutored at home before enrolling in a lyceum for girls, and at the age of 16, she decided she wanted to be a medical doctor. Pursuing the study of science, Gerty learned that she lacked the prerequisites in Latin, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Over the course of a year, she managed to study the equivalent of eight years of Latin, five years of science, and five years of mathematics. She was admitted to the medical school of the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague in 1914 where she met Carl.

Carl was drafted into the Austrian army and served during World War I. Life was difficult after the war, and Gerty developed dry eye caused by severe malnutrition due to food shortages. These problems, in conjunction with the increasing anti-Semitism (Gerty was from a jewish family), contributed to the Coris’ decision to leave Europe. In 1922, the Coris both immigrated to the United States (Gerty six months after Carl because of difficulty in obtaining a position) to pursue medical research at what later became the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. In 1928, they became naturalized citizens.

They continued their research, specializing in investigating carbohydrate metabolism. They were particularly interested in how glucose is metabolized in the human body and the hormones that regulate this process. They published fifty papers while at Roswell. The lead author of each paper was the one who had done the most research. Gerty Cori published eleven articles as the sole author. In 1929, they proposed the theoretical cycle that later won them the Nobel Prize, the Cori cycle. The cycle describes how the human body uses chemical reactions to break some carbohydrates such as glycogen in muscle tissue into lactic acid, while synthesizing others.