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Oral History, 1982.
Date(s)
- 1982 (Creation)
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Biographical history
Carl Ferdinand Cori was born in 1896 in Prague (then located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire), the son of a noted Austrian biologist. Cori began medical study in his native city, but this was interrupted by military service in World War I, during which he served as a medic on the Italian front. While a student again after the war, he became engaged to a classmate, Gerty Theresa Radnitz. The two were married in Vienna in 1920 shortly after receiving their medical degrees. Both chose research careers, but it proved very difficult to find suitable positions in war-impoverished Austria. In 1922, the Coris emigrated to the United States, where Carl took a position in Buffalo, at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease (now Roswell Park Memorial Institute).
In 1931, Cori was appointed professor and chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He would later switch departments and become professor and chair of the department of Biochemistry in 1946. Working with his wife Gerty, the Coris most notable contribution to science was their series of discoveries that elucidated the pathway of glycogen breakdown in animal cells and the enzymic basis of its regulation, now known as the Cori Cycle.
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Cori recounts his education in Trieste and Prague and his service as a medic in World War I. He describes his early research in pharmacology in Europe and then the couple's emigration to the U.S. when Cori accepted a position as chief biochemist at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease in Buffalo, New York in 1922. The interview covers Cori's acceptance of the position of head of the Department of Pharmacology at the Washington University School of Medicine in 1931, his gradual shift to the Department of Biochemistry and winning the Nobel Prize in 1947. Cori discusses several of his colleagues at the Washington University School of Medicine, including Leo Loeb, Joseph Erlanger, Evarts A. Graham, Robert J. Terry, Oliver Lowry, and W. McKim Marriott.
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Preferred Citation:
Item description, Reference Code, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives, Washington University in St. Louis.
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- Cori, Carl F. (Subject)
- Cori, Gerty T. (Subject)
- Erlanger, Joseph (Subject)
- Graham, Evarts A. (Evarts Ambrose), 1883-1957 (Subject)
- Lowry, Oliver H. (Subject)
- Terry, Robert J. (Robert James), 1871-1966 (Subject)
- Loeb, Leo, 1869-1959 (Subject)
- Marriott, W. McKim (Subject)
- Washington University School of Medicine (Subject)
- Department of Pharmacology, Washington University School of Medicine (Subject)
- Department of Biological Chemistry, Washington University School of Medicine (Subject)