Gerty Cori

Gerty Cori was born Gerty Theresa Radnitz into a Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (modern Czech Republic) 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. 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, an unusual achievement for women at that time. ==Marriage and early career==

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. They moved to Vienna, capital of Austria, where Gerty spent the next two years at the Carolinen Children's Hospital, and her husband worked in a laboratory. ==Immigration to the United States==

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 New York State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease (1912-1945), later the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York. In 1928, they became naturalized citizens. The director of the institute threatened to dismiss Gerty if she did not cease collaborative research with her husband. She continued to work with Carl and was nevertheless kept on at the institute. 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. ==Washington University==

The Coris left Roswell in 1931 after publishing their work on carbohydrate metabolism. Several universities offered Carl a position but refused to hire Gerty. Gerty was informed during one university interview that it was considered "un-American" for a married couple to work together. she was warned that she might impede her husband's career. While working at Washington University, they discovered an intermediate compound in frog muscles that enabled the breakdown of glycogen, called glucose 1-phosphate, later known as the Cori ester. Gerty Cori also studied glycogen storage disease, identifying at least four forms, each related to a particular enzymatic defect. She was the first to show that a defect in an enzyme can cause a human genetic disease. Gerty and Carl Cori collaborated on most of their work, including that which won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen". They received one half the prize, the other half going to the Argentinian physiologist, Bernardo Houssay "for his discovery of the part played by the hormone of the anterior pituitary lobe in the metabolism of sugar". Their work helped clarify the mechanisms of carbohydrate metabolism, advancing understanding of the reversible conversion of sugars and starch, which proved crucial to the development of diabetic treatments. ==Awards and recognition==

In 1947, Gerty Cori became the third woman—and the first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science. Previously, Marie Curie had received two, and Irène Joliot-Curie won one. Cori 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. Cori was the fourth woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as board member of the National Science Foundation, a position she held until her death. The twenty-five foot square laboratory shared by Cori and her husband at Washington University was deemed a National Historic Landmark by the American Chemical Society in 2004. The crater Cori on the Moon is named after her, as is the Cori crater on Venus. She shares a star with her husband on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. Cori was honored by 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), but was 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 awarded a half share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine." The US Department of Energy named the NERSC-8 supercomputer installed at Berkeley Lab in 2015/2016 after Cori. In November 2016, NERSC's Cori ranked 5th on the TOP500 list of world's most powerful high-performance computers. Gerty is the more celebrated of the Coris because she is considered a pioneer woman of science. In her lifetime, however, she experienced much prejudice as a woman. ==Final years==

Just before winning the Nobel prize, 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. In 2016 Tom donated his parents Nobel Prize medals to the Washington University School of Medicine where they are on display in the Becker Medical Library. Carl Cori 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 in 1984, aged 87. ==See also==