VOL. 12 (1953) BIOCHIMICA ET BIOPHYSICA ACTA 



INTRODUCTION 



OTTO WARBURG, ARTISAN OF CELL CHEMISTRY 



by 



DEAN BURK 



Foreign Member, Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology, Bevlin-Dahlem {Germany), 



and Head of Cytochemistry Section, National Institutes of Health, 



United States Public Health Service, Bethesda, Md. (U.S.A.) 



Otto Heinrich Warburg was born on October 8, 1883 in Freiburg in Baden. In 

 i8g6 he came with his parents to Beriin, where his father, Emil Warburg, had been 

 called to the Chair of Physics in the University of Berlin and was later appointed to 

 thePresidencv of the Physikaltsche Reichsanstalt {Impenal Bureau of Physical Standards). 

 The mother of Otto Warburg stemmed from a family of public officials and soldiers, 

 and her brother fell as a general in World War I. In two large official residences of his 

 parents — -the first at the Marschallbriicke in Berlin, the second in Marchstrasse in 

 Berlin-Charlottenburg, and both built from plans prepared by Frau von Helmholtz — 

 Otto Warburg grew up during the culminating period of splendor of the Germany of 

 Wilhelm II, in personal touch with many leading circles in the capital. 



In the home of his parents, Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann told him about 

 Bacterium photometricum and photosynthesis; Emil Fischer about plans to fathom the 

 secret of enzymes ; and Van 't Hoff about the maximum work obtainable in chemical 

 reactions. Thus the course of his life was already set in childhood. 



Later, at the university, he learned chemistry from Emil Fischer, with whom he 

 worked for three years; medicine in the clinic of Ludolf von Krehl, to whom he was 

 an assistant for three years; thermodynamics from Walter Nernst, with whom he 

 worked on oxidation-reduction potentials in living systems in 1914; and physics and 

 photochemistry from his father, with whom he worked on the quantum requirement 

 of photosynthesis in 1920 in the Physikalische Reichsanstalt. In 1913 he became a Member 

 of the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Since then, without interruption except 

 for World War I, he has contributed increasingly to the fame and renown of this 

 scientific organization, from 1931 on as Director of the Institute whose name is known 

 to all biochemists. 



He has nev^r given a course of lectures to students. He is no administrator. He is 

 no member of committees. Among the forty rooms in his institute he has no office, 

 conference room, or writing room, apart from the general library. He selects his staff 

 on a basis of technical ability and talent. In his opinion, the building of a research 

 institute in the natural sciences must have for its main foundation a permanent staff 

 of technically trained assistants. 



