Gerty Cori, 1896-1957

Born Gerty Theresa Radnitz into a Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
She received her primary education at home and later attended an academy for girls, graduating at 16. Inspiring to become a doctor, she completed a year of the necessary studies required for the medical school’s application, including Latin, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In 1914, at 18, she began her studies at the medical school of the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague.

During school, she met fellow medical student Carl Cori, and they married right after receiving their degree in 1920. Afterward, they moved to Vienna, where she worked at the Carolinen Children’s Hospital, conducting experiments in temperature regulation and publishing papers on blood disorders.

Health problems caused by malnutrition during WW1 and the increasing anti-Semitism drove the Coris to leave Europe, and in 1922, they immigrated to the US. They worked together at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, focusing on carbohydrate metabolism, researching the glucose metabolizing in the body and how hormones regulate the process. The couple published fifty papers on the subject, eleven with Cori as the sole author.

In 1929, the Coris introduced the Cori cycle, which describes the cellular process in which the body stores sugar in muscles as glycogen, converts it to glucose in the liver, and sends it back to the muscles for energy.

Although the Coris were equal in their work, they were not treated as such, and she experienced much chauvinism and prejudice. When the couple looked for an institute that would enable them to work together, they were refused because of Cori’s gender or because, as one university stated, it is “un-American for a married couple to work together.”

Eventually, in 1931, the Coris received an offer from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Although they could collaborate, she was offered a research associate position at one-tenth of her husband’s salary. It took 13 years before she was appointed associate professor of Research Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology and four more years to be promoted to full professor, serving in this position until she died.

While at Washington University, the Coris continued to research the action mechanism of hormones and discovered what would be known as the Cori ester – a compound in frog muscles that helps to break down glycogen. They also found the enzyme that created the compound and identified that it’s the first step in turning stored energy (glycogen) into glucose.

In addition, Cori researched glycogen storage disease by herself and identified several forms related to enzymatic defects. She was the first to present how these defects can cause human genetic disorders.
In 1947, for their discovery of the Cori cycle, the Coris won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first American woman, and the third in the world to win a Nobel Prize in Science.

Months before winning the Nobel prize, Cori was diagnosed with myelosclerosis, a bone marrow disease. With declining health, she continued researching and discovering new enzymes and their relations to various health problems.

She was also a member of several societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Society of Biological Chemists.

She died at 61.

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