Cartographer of Metabolism
A biochemist who found a cycle where others saw separate reactions. His map of metabolism revealed how a cell renews its intermediates while drawing energy from fuel.
Cartographer of Metabolism
Krebs worked in Otto Warburg’s laboratory, learning the discipline of measuring metabolic reactions. He later described Warburg as his most important scientific teacher.
Working with William Arthur Johnson, Krebs brought evidence together for the citric acid cycle. Intermediates were regenerated as fuel was oxidised: a circular organisation that connected apparently separate reactions.
The original paper is a rewarding place to begin. It shows a pathway being inferred from experiments, before the familiar textbook diagram made it look inevitable.
Krebs and Fritz Lipmann shared the Nobel Prize for distinct discoveries: the citric acid cycle and coenzyme A. Together their work connected the routes of metabolism with the chemistry that carries reactions forward.
1953-12-11
Krebs's Nobel Lecture tracing the experimental development and biochemical role of the citric acid cycle.Read1937 (original); 1980 (open archival reprint)
Krebs and W. A. Johnson's landmark Enzymologia paper presenting the citric acid cycle, available as an open FEBS Letters archival reprint.Read1953
Official Nobel award record for the discovery of the citric acid cycle.Read1918–1982 (archive coverage)
Catalogue for Krebs's scientific papers, correspondence, autobiographical drafts, and the rejected June 1937 Nature typescript announcing the cycle.Read
Otto WarburgThe laboratory that shaped his experimental approach
Fritz LipmannCoenzyme A meets the citric acid cycle
Peter MitchellHow oxidation becomes a usable energy gradient
