Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award
Hans Krebs
Michael Heidelberger
George Wald
Hans Krebs
For his work as discoverer of the urea and citric acid cycles, which are basic to our understanding of how the body converts food into energy.
The outstanding scientific career of Hans Krebs has been marked by his ability to systematize masses of knowledge according to simple principles.
His first success in this direction was his solution of the problem of urea synthesis in the living cell. Despite the numerous researches on the mechanism of the biosynthesis of urea, it remained for Krebs, in 1932, to propose and prove that urea is formed by a cyclic process. This work was of great importance not only because of the problem it solved, but also because of the originality and elegance of the solution.
In 1938, Krebs developed the concept of another cyclic process to explain the mode of aerobic oxidation of the major dietary constituents. With the development of this concept, known throughout the scientific world as the Krebs citric acid cycle, innumerable isolated and apparently unrelated observations on intermediary metabolism were brought into an understandable pattern, and order was brought out of chaos.
The originality of ideas advanced by Professor Krebs as well as his fruitful research have opened new vistas and paved the way for the solution of fundamental problems of cellular metabolism and for the understanding of disease.
Michael Heidelberger
For decisive contributions in developing a new subscience—the precise measuring tool of immunochemistry.
Rarely does it happen that one man working in a science which borders upon many related fields is able to make contributions so decisive as to permit all of these fields to advance more rapidly.
Trained as an organic chemist, his earlier years were devoted to elucidating relationships between chemical structure and specificity in the fashioning of chemotherapeutic agents. Becoming interested in the type specificity of pneumococci, his discovery with Oswald Avery of the pneumococcal polysaccharides placed in his hands the tool par excellence for the study of immunological specificity, and led him to the development of quantitative methods for the measurement of antigens, antibodies and complement and to a quantitative theory of their interaction.
These methods established the new subscience of immunochemistry upon the firm foundations of analytical chemistry, and made possible the measurement of traces of proteins and carbohydrates with an accuracy and specificity not obtainable by any other method. Their extensive development under his leadership and inspiration has made them indispensable in protein and carbohydrate chemistry, to which they provide unique criteria of homogeneity and purity and make possible the perception of otherwise unapparent structural similarities and differences. They have been and continue to be decisive in the evaluation of the effectiveness of immunization procedures in man and in the elucidation of the mechanisms of allergic reactions, of the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases of unknown etiology, and of the formation of antibody and other serum globulins.
The transformation of immunology from a largely descriptive science which applied bizarre names to odd properties of ill-defined or hypothetical substances to immunochemistry—the precise and keen cutting tool by which many ragged edges in science have been planed away and intrinsic structure clearly revealed—is the contribution of Michael Heidelberger.
George Wald
For his outstanding achievements in explaining the physiology of vision in man.
Whenever scientists review their understanding of the physiology of vision or of the functional role of vitamin A, the contributions of George Wald have a prominent place.
His explorations had an auspicious beginning. Basic training at New York University and Columbia University was followed by a National Research Council fellowship for advanced study in Berlin, Heidelberg, Zurich and Chicago. Since 1934, he has been a member of the faculty at Harvard University in the Department of Biology.
Although Dr. Wald's research papers have been singularly related to one specific field of investigation—the chemistry of vision—the range of his interest has not been narrow. Rather, it has had a delightful penetration into comparative biochemistry, evolution, ecology, the essentials of good teaching, and a keen appreciation of the art of living on a high plane. His discoveries have been especially valuable in identifying specific reversible reactions within the eye in response to light. Visual purple and other compounds were thus related to vitamins A1 and A2, and these in turn were associated with the early sea or fresh water environment of the organism.
He has given mankind a new picture of one of the most treasured gifts of life—the capacity to see.