He loved the fine arts as much as he loved the natural sciences.
But his curiosity for natural processes - fueled early by a given microscope - was simply too strong, so that Edmond H. Fischer became more interested in chemistry and biology than in music as a teenager.
That he was right with his decision was to prove in 1992, when he and his long-time colleague, the biochemist Edwin G. Krebs, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Manfred Lindinger
Editor in the “Nature and Science” section.
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At the University of Washington in Seattle in the 1950s, Fischer and Krebs discovered a central biochemical mechanism that plays a central role in regulating metabolism: phosphorylation.
Certain enzymes in the body's cells are activated or deactivated by attaching or splitting off phosphorus-containing groups.
The findings of the two researchers have led, among other things, to a better understanding of many body functions, such as heart function, the connections between stress and allergies, the regulation of genes and our long-term memory.
Fischer, born in Shanghai in 1920, grew up in Geneva, where he studied chemistry and received his doctorate. After the Second World War he went to the United States as a Research Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1953 he became a scientific assistant there and in 1961 a professor of biochemistry. Long after his retirement he had his own office and lectured at the university. Teaching, traveling and music were his great passions to the end.
He preferred to give lectures in front of schoolchildren and young scientists. Eddy, as his friends called him, was also a welcome guest in Lindau at the annual Nobel Laureate Meeting. This year he accompanied the virtual "Lindau Symphony Orchestra" on the piano - because of Corona, out of necessity from home. At the end of August, the oldest living Nobel Prize winner died in Seattle at the age of 101.