Gerty Cori

Gerty Theresa Radnitz was born into a Jewish family in Prague in 1896. Her Father, Otto Radnitz, was a Chemist who became manager of sugar refineries after inventing a successful method for refining sugar. Her mother, Martha, a friend of Franz Kafka, was a culturally sophisticated woman. 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 math.

Her uncle, a professor of pediatrics, encouraged her to attend medical school, so she studied for and passed the University entrance examination. She was admitted to the medical school of the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague in 1914, which was unusual for a woman to achieve at that time.

While studying she met Carl Cori who was immediately attracted to her charm, vitality, sense of humor and her love of the outdoors and mountain climbing. Gerty and Carl had both entered medical school at eighteen and both graduated in 1920. They married that same year. Gerty converted to Catholicism, enabling her and Carl to marry in the Roman Catholic Church. They moved to Vienna, Austria, where Gerty spent the next two years at the Carolinen Children's Hospital, and her husband worked in a laboratory. While at the hospital, Gerty Cori worked on the pediatrics unit and conducted experiments in temperature regulation, comparing temperatures before and after thyroid treatment, and published papers on blood disorders.

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 the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases (now the Roswell Park Cancer Institute) in Buffalo, New York. In 1928, they became naturalized citizens. The Director for the Institute threatened to dismiss Gerty if she did not cease collaborative research with her husband. She continued to work with Carl and was also kept on at the Institute.

Although the Coris were discouraged from working together at Roswell, they continued to do so, 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, with first author status going to the one who had done most of the research for a given paper. 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.

In 1931, they moved to St. Louis, Missouri, as Washington University offered both Carl and Gerty positions, although Gerty's rank and salary were much lower than her husband's. Despite her research background, Gerty was only offered a position as a research associate at a salary one tenth of that received by her husband; she was warned that she might harm her husband's career. Washington University's Chancellor, Arthur Holley Compton made a special allowance for Gerty to hold a position there, going against the university's nepotism rules. Gerty had to wait thirteen years before she attained the same rank as her husband. In 1943, she was made an associate professor of Research Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology. Months before she won the Nobel Prize, she was promoted to full professor, a post she held until her death in 1957.

Gerty and Carl Cori were late members of the American Society of Biological Chemists, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society and the American Philosophical Society. They were presented jointly with the Midwest Award (American Chemical Society) in 1946 and the Squibb Award in Endocrinology in 1947. In addition, Gerty Cori received the Garvan Medal (1948), the St. Louis Award (1948), the Sugar Research Prize (1950), the Borden Award (1951) and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Boston University (1948), Smith College (1949), Yale (1951), Columbia (1954), and Rochester (1955). Carl Cori, a Member of the Royal Society ( London) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also received the Willard Gibbs Medal (1948), the Sugar Research Foundation Award (1947, 1950) and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Western Reserve University (1946), Yale (1946), Boston (1948), and Cambridge (1949). He was President of Fourth International Congress of Biochemistry (Vienna, 1958).

In 1947 Gerty Cori became the third woman—and the first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science, the previous recipients being Marie Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie. She was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1953.

In 1948, Cori was awarded the Garvan-Olin Medal, an award that recognizes distinguished work in chemistry by American women chemists. She was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as board member of the National Science Foundation, a position she held until her death. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the fourth woman so honored.

In 1949 she was awarded the Iota Sigma Pi National Honorary Member for her significant contribution.

Just before winning the Nobel prize and while they were on a mountain climbing trip, the Coris learned that Gerty Cori was ill with myelosclerosis, a fatal disease of the bone marrow. During her years at the Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease, Gerty had studied the effects of X-rays on the human body, which was thought to contribute to her illness. She struggled for ten years with the illness while continuing her scientific work; only in the final months did she let up. In 1957, she died in her home. Gerty was cremated and her ashes scattered. Later, her son erected a cenotaph for Gerty and Carl Cori in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

Carl remarried in 1960 to Anne Fitzgerald-Jones. The two later moved to Boston, where Carl taught at Harvard Medical School. He continued to work there until his death at the age of eighty-eight.

In 2004 the research of Gerti and Carl Cori on carbohydrate metabolism was recognized by the American Chemical Society as a National Historic Chemical Landmark at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Cori was honored by the release of a US Postal Service stamp in April, 2008. The 41-cent stamp was reported by the Associated Press to have a printing error in the chemical formula for glucose-1-phosphate (Cori ester). The stamp is being distributed despite the error. Her description reads: "Biochemist Gerty Cori (1896–1957), in collaboration with her husband, Carl, made important discoveries—including a new derivative of glucose—that elucidated the steps of carbohydrate metabolism and contributed to the understanding and treatment of diabetes and other metabolic diseases. In 1947, the couple was award a half share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine." The other Scientists on the "American Scientists" sheet include Linus Pauling, Chemist, Edwin Hubble, Astronomer, and John Bardeen, Physicist.

The US Department of Energy named the NERSC-8 supercomputer installed in 2015/2016 after Cori.