Otto Heinrich Warburg

Otto Heinrich Warburg (1883 to 1970) was a German physiologist and medical doctor who was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1931 for his discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme. Born in Freiburg im Breisgau, he earned a doctorate in chemistry in Berlin in 1906 and a doctorate in medicine in Heidelberg in 1911. Between 1908 and 1914 he worked at the Naples Marine Biological Station, where he showed that respiration in sea urchin eggs rises as much as sixfold after fertilization. From 1918 he was professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin-Dahlem, and by 1931 he was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology, where he investigated the metabolism of tumors and the respiration of cancer cells.