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This Unit's

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History Lecture

Science Lecture

Lab

Parents' Notes

History Lecture for Unit 59: Krebs and Cellular Respiration

For Class

• Period: 1890-1970

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• Geographic Location: Europe and America
• People to know: Hans Krebs, Fritz Lippmann
• See science topics: Cellular Respiration

Lecture:

• Discovering How Cells Use Energy
• Study/Discussion Questions
• Further Study

Discovering How Cells Use Energy

Cellular Respiration

The discovery of the process of cell respiration is the result of the work of Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, a biologist born in 1900 in Hildesheim, Germany, who moved to England in 1933 to escape possible persecution by the Nazis. Krebs performed most of his research at Cambridge, Sheffield, and Oxford Universities in England, working out the details of what was then called the urea cycle.

Fritz Lippmann, another German-born scientist who left Germany to escape the Nazis in the early 1930s, went to work for the Rockefeller Institute (now University). He joined the faculty of Cornell University, and later moved to Harvard. After World War II ended, he continued Krebs's work, and identified the chemical coenzyme A, which provided the link between the two phases of cellular metabolism, glycolysis, and the Krebs' cycle. In 1953, Lippmann shared the Nobel Prize in physiology with Krebs for their work on metabolic processes.

Study/Discussion Questions:

• Besides biology, what other scientific disciplines are needed to explain cellular respiration in living things?
• How does the ability to do research in a university setting help the researchers? How might it hinder them?
• Who decides which research projects get funded? What happens to the results of the research?

Further Study/On Your Own

• Check out the Science Internships available for student scientists at Johns Hopkins Science Internships.

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