1 Otto Warburg, artisan of cell chemistry : 

 By Dean Burk 



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

 1896 he came with his parents to Berlin, where his father, Emil Warburg, had 

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

 1905 to 1922 President of the Physikalische Reichsanstalt (Imperial Bureau of 

 Physical Standards). The mother of Otto Warburg stemmed from a family of 

 public officials and soldiers, her brother feil as a general in World War I. In 

 two large official residences of his parents — the first at the Marschallbrücke 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 the Germany of Wilhelm II. 



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 Jakobus Hendricus 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 quan- 

 tum requirement of photosynthesis in 1920 in the Physikalische Reichsanstalt. In 

 1913 he became a Member of the newly founded Kaiser W'ilhelm 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 never 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. 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. 



He is best characterized as an artisan, or even, by his own frequent say so in 

 public, as a technician. He believes that, in the natural sciences, one can find out 

 something new when one does something with one's hands that nobody did before. 

 Thus, the fermentation of tumors was discovered when in the surrounding Ringer- 

 solution the bicarbonate concentration was raised 20-fold. Iron-oxygenase was 

 discovered when in biological experimentation with carbon monoxide the CO- 

 pressure was raised 1000-fold. Acyl phosphate was discovered when in the oxi- 



* Aus Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 12 (1953): 9. 



