ABOVE: CHRISTIAN FLEMMING/LINDAU NOBEL LAUREATE MEETINGS
Biochemist Edmond Fischer, who codiscovered the mechanism of reversible phosphorylation alongside Edwin Krebs, died in his adopted hometown of Seattle on August 27 at the age of 101.
Fischer was born in Shanghai, China, in 1920 to a French mother and an Austrian father. According to his autobiography, he began primary school at a local French-language institution but joined his older brothers at a Swiss boarding school at age seven. Throughout high school, he studied piano, and even thought about becoming a musician. But he began studying chemistry in college at the University of Geneva, earning his National License Diploma (a step between a Bachelor’s and a Master’s) in biology and chemistry during World War II.
He stayed on at the university, and in 1947, completed his doctoral thesis on the structure of polysaccharides and of alpha-amylase, an enzyme that breaks them down. He ...
