[Reprinted from THE BIOCHEMICAL BULLETIN, 1912, i, pp. 372-376. March.] 



WALDEMAR KOCH 



Herman Koch, a mining engineer of international reputation, 

 lived in Clausthal, Hannover, Germany. His father, his grand- 

 father and his grandfather's father had been mining engineers be- 

 fore him. One of his nine sons was Robert Koch, the great bac- 

 teriologist ; another was Hugo Koch, also a mining engineer ; another, 

 Arnold Koch, came to this country in 1867 with letters of intro- 

 duction from Alfred Nobel, who was a friend of Herman Koch. 

 Arnold Koch settled in St. Louis, where his only son, Waldemar* 

 was born April 8, 1875. 



The first part of Dr. Koch's college life was spent in Washington 

 University, St. Louis, but his last year he spent in Harvard, from, 

 which he received his undergraduate degree, and two years later, in 

 1900, the degree of Ph.D. in organic chemistry. He was then for 

 one year, assistant in physiology in the Harvard Medical School with 

 Professor Porter. He began at that time the study of the chem- 

 istry of the nervous system, which he continued until his death. He 

 came to the University of Chicago as an associate in physiological 

 chemistry in 1901, and with a short interregnum spent in teaching" 

 pharmacology and physiological chemistry in the University of Mis- 

 souri, he remained in the University of Chicago continuously there- 

 after, where at the time of his death he was associate professor of 

 pharmacology. He was for a time with Schmiedeberg in Strass- 

 burg; and during his vacations he worked for several years, part 

 of the time under a grant from the Rockefeller Institute, in the labo- 

 ratory of Dr. Mott in the Claybury Asylum for the Insane, near 

 London; afterwards for one season he was on the staff of the new 

 hospital for the insane at Long Grove, near London; and for the 

 past year he had been connected, also, with the Wistar Institute of 

 Anatomy in Philadelphia. In these various institutions he had un- 

 usual opportunities, which he utilized to the utmost, for the study 

 of pathological and normal nervous material. 



Dr. Koch's work on the chemistry of the nervous system is 



372 



