Memories of my early childhood are clouded with uncertainties
because I was essentially separated from my parents since the early age of seven.
I was born in Shanghai, China on April 6, 1920. My father had come there from
Vienna, Austria after earning doctorates in law and business. My mother, born
Renée Tapernoux, had
arrived from France with her parents via Hanoi.
Her father had left Switzerland as a young man to become a journalist for L'Aurore.
This journal published the letter by Emile Zola entitled "J'accuse" in which
he denounced the government cover-up during the Affaire Dreyfus which tore France
apart at the turn of the century. When the case against Dreyfus collapsed in
the early 1900s my grandfather left for French Indochina, then called le Tonkin.
He later went to Shanghai where he founded the "Courrier de Chine", the first
French newspaper published in China. He also helped to establish "l'Ecole Municipale
Française" where I first went to school.
At age 7, my parents sent my two older brothers and me to La Châtaigneraie,
a large Swiss boarding school overlooking Lake Geneva. My oldest brother, Raoul,
was the first to leave to attend the ETH, the Swiss Federal Polytechnical Institute
in Zürich where he was awarded a degree in engineering. My brother Georges
went to Oxford and read law.
In 1935, I entered Geneva's all boys Collège de Calvin from which I obtained
my Maturité Fédérale four years later, even as the specter
of World War II loomed evermore menacing. While in school, I formed a lifelong
friendship with my classmate Wilfried Haudenschild who dazzled me with his tinkering
abilities, off-the-wall ideas and mechanical inventiveness. Together we decided
that one of us should go into the Sciences and the other into Medicine so that
we could cure all the ills of the world.
Another important event marked my High School days: I was admitted to the Geneva
Conservatory of Music. I had heard Johnny Aubert give an unforgettable rendition
of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto. I decided on the spot that I wanted to study
with him. After an audition in which I nervously presented Mendelssohn's Rondo
Capriccioso and Chopin's A-maj. Polonaise, he took me on, and that spelled the
beginning of many enthralling years. Music had always played an important part
in my life, to such an extent that I even wondered whether I should not make
a career of it. But finally I thought it better to keep music purely for pleasure.
It was my goal to become a microbiologist but Fernand Chodat, the Professeur
of Bacteriology, argued that there was little future in that field, which was
probably the case in Switzerland at that time. He advised me to get a diploma
in Chemistry saying that, in any case, test tubes were of more use than a microscope
to modern microbiologists.
I therefore entered the School of Chemistry just at the start of World War II.
Two years of quantitative inorganic analyses seemed endless. Organic chemistry
finally arrived like a breath of fresh air, if not a reprieve on life. I earned
two Licences ès Sciences, one in Biology, the other in Chemistry and,
two years later, the Diploma of "Ingénieur Chimiste". For my thesis,
I elected to work with Prof. Kurt H. Meyer, Head of the Department of Organic
Chemistry. "Le Patron" as we affectionately called him, was a most impressive
person. At the time when most scientists showed little understanding of natural
high polymers, Kurt Meyer had already authored several books on the subject,
starting with the epochal "Meyer-Mark: Der Aufbau der hochpolymeren organischen
Naturstoffe" and "Makromolekulare Chemie". His main interest lay in the structure
of polysaccharides, particularly starch and glycogen. To unravel the structure
of these molecules, enzymes were needed: alpha- and beta-amylases, phosphorylase,
etc. Therefore, the lab was divided into two groups: the enzymologists under
the guidance of Peter Bernfeld and carbohydrate chemists under Roger Jeanloz.
I decided to work on the purification of hog pancreas amylase. Within a couple
of years, we succeeded in crystallizing alpha-amylase from pork pancreas and
soon after that, from a variety of other sources including human pancreas and
saliva, two strains of A. oryzae, B. subtilis and P. saccharophila.
It is at that time that Eric A. Stein joined the laboratory, beginning a marvelous
15-year collaboration and a lifelong friendship.
It had always been my intention to go to the
United States to pursue my studies
in Biochemistry. In those days, that field was in its infancy in most European
universities to such an extent that I was asked to present the very first course
in Enzymology as a Privat Docent at the University of Geneva in 1950. Two events
hastened my departure for the USA: the untimely death of Kurt Meyer following
an asthma attack and my being abruptly issued a US immigration visa. Apparently,
the US consulates abroad were clearing their files before the complicated McCarran
Act would come into effect. I had decided to go to CalTech on a Swiss Post-doctoral
Fellowship that Professor Paul Karrer succeeded in securing for me on a moment's
notice. Some friends who knew of my arrival in New York had arranged for me
to give some seminars on my way to Pasadena: Maria Fuld at Pittsburgh and Henry
Lardy at Madison. To my utter sex Fischer - beast Edmond H. free the - pantyhose Fischer H. crotchless Edmond pictures incest son public Fischer Edmond health mother - H. and подстанция H. Fischer - Трансформаторная КТП Edmond боковинами Fischer полка - с ВАЗ Ford Edmond 2112 Focus H. surprise, Fischer comi roberts - H. gary Edmond I was free sex beast Fischer H. - the Edmond offered a job in both places.
Then, upon my arrival at CalTech I found a letter from Hans Neurath, Chairman
of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, inviting
me to come to Seattle, apparently for the same purpose. I thought that the Americans
had to be crazy since at that time, academic positions in Europe were one-in-a-million.
I visited Seattle with my wife and thought that the surrounding mountains, forests
and lakes were beautiful, reminiscent of Switzerland. The Medical School was
brand-new and when I was offered an Assistant Professorship, I accepted and
have never regretted that decision.
There were only seven of us on the faculty and we quickly became close friends.
I remember the amused expressions of my colleagues seated in the back row of
the class listening to my fractured English when lecturing the medical students.
I also remember Ed Krebs' broad smile whenever I lapsed into French. What Ed
didn't realize, though, is that within two years, while my English didn't improve
very much, his deteriorated completely!
Within six months of my arrival, Ed Krebs and I started to work together on
glycogen phosphorylase. He had been a student of the Cori's in St. Louis. They
believed that AMP had to serve some kind
of co-factor function for that enzyme.
In Geneva, on the other hand, we had purified potato phosphorylase for which
there was no AMP requirement. Even though essentially no information existed
at that time on the evolutionary relationship of proteins, we knew that enzymes,
whatever their origin, used the same co-enzymes to catalyze identical reactions.
It seemed unlikely, therefore, that muscle phosphorylase would require AMP as
a co-factor but not potato phosphorylase. We decided to try to elucidate the
role of this nucleotide in the phosphorylase reaction. Of course, we never found
out what AMP was doing: that problem was solved 6-7 years later when Jacques
Monod proposed his allosteric model for the regulation of enzymes. But what
we stumbled on was another quite unexpected reaction: i.e. that muscle phosphorylase
was regulated by phosphorylation-dephosphorylation. This is yet another example
of what makes fundamental research so attractive: one knows where one takes
off but one never knows where one will end up.
These were very exciting years when just about every experiment revealed something
new and unexpected. At first we worked alone in a small, single laboratory with
stone sinks. Experiments were planned the night before and carried out the next
day. We worked so closely together that whenever one of us had to leave the
laboratory in the middle of an experiment, the other would carry on without
a word of explanation. Ed Krebs had a small group that continued his original
work, determining the structure and function of DPNH-X, a derivative of NADH.
I was still studying the alpha-amylases with Eric Stein. In collaboration with
Bert Vallee, we were able to demonstrate that these enzymes were in reality
calcium-containing metalloproteins.
In those days, we waited all year for the next Federation Meeting or Gordon
Conference. It was an occasion for me
to get together with my friends on the
East Coast: Herb and Eva Sober and Chris and Flossie Anfinsen from NIH, Bill
and Inge Harrington from Johns Hopkins, Bert and Kuggie Vallee from the Brigham
and Al and Lee Meister, then at Tufts and later at Cornell, and many others.
I have forgotten much about the meetings themselves. There was the excitement
of hearing about the latest breakthroughs, the frantic preparations for talks
that had to be given, and the numerous notebooks filled with information, questions
and problems that had to be solved. I will never forget, though, the marvelous
time we had together speaking far into the night about anything and everything.
Some of these friends are gone today but their memory is still vivid.
I have two sons, François and Henri, from my first wife Nelly Gagnaux,
a Swiss National who died in 1961. I married my present wife Beverley née
Bullock from Eureka, California, in 1963. She has a daughter Paula from a first
marriage. All three of our children are now married and my two sons each has
a son.
I received the Werner Medal from the Swiss Chemical Society, the Lederle Medical
Faculty Award; the Prix Jaubert from the University of Geneva and, jointly with
Ed Krebs, the Senior Passano Award and the Steven C. Beering Award from Indiana
University. I received Doctorates Honoris Causa from the University of Montpellier,
France and the University of Basel, Switzerland and was elected to the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and to the National Academy of Sciences
in 1973.
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1992, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1993
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
 
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