Gerty Cori

Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori was a Czech-American biochemist whose pioneering enzymology illuminated the molecular pathways by which animal cells store and consume energy. Graduating from the German University of Prague medical school in 1920, she married fellow student Carl Ferdinand Cori and immigrated to the United States in 1922 to escape post-WWI European hardship and antisemitism.

Working at Washington University in St. Louis—initially offered only nominal, underpaid research appointments due to anti-nepotism policies—Gerty formed an equal intellectual partnership with Carl. In 1929, they elucidated the Cori cycle: demonstrating that muscle glycogen is converted during anaerobic exercise into lactic acid, which travels via the bloodstream to the liver where it is resynthesized into glycogen and released as glucose. Gerty isolated glucose-1-phosphate (the 'Cori ester') and discovered glycogen phosphorylase. In 1947, she became the first American woman, and only the third woman in history, to receive a Nobel Prize in science, honored in Physiology or Medicine.