(1899 - 1986)
Fritz Albert Lipmann was born on June 12, 1899, in
Koenigsberg, Germany (now
Kaliningrad, Russia). From
1917 to 1922, he studied medicine at the universities Koenigsberg, Berlin,
and Munich. In 1924, Lipmann obtained his medical degree at Berlin University.
In 1926, he became an assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under
the guidance of Otto Meyerhof. In 1927, Lipmann returned to the University
of Berlin to aquire his Ph.D. He returned to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
in 1930, but left to spend a year as a Rockefeller Fellow researching
in the University’s laboratory. In 1932, he moved to Copenhagen,
where he was appointed Research Associate in the Biological Institute
of the Carlsberg Foundation.
In 1939, Lipmann immigrated to the United States,
fleeing the Nazi regime. That year, he became Research Associate in the Department of
Biochemistry at Cornell Medical School in New York. At Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston (1941-1957), where he headed the biochemistry
research department, Lipmann isolated (1947) and determined the active
molecular structure (1953) as Coenzymen A. Coenzymen A is one of the
most important catalyst involved in cellular metabolism and the breakdown
of food into functional energy.
From 1949 to 1957, he was appointed Professor of Biological
Chemistry at Harvard Medical School. Afterward, he taught and researched
at Rockefeller University in New York City.
He was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Medicine in 1953 (along
Krebs) for his dicovery of coenzyme
A. In addition to receiving the Nobel
Prize, Lipmann was awarded the National
Medal of Science in 1966. He is also a
member of several distinguished societies
including a Foreign Member of the Royal
Society in London, the Faraday Society,
and the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences.
Lipmann died on July 24, 1986, in Poughkeepsie, New