Gerty and Carl Cori

           I’m not much of a romantic, but the lives of Gerty and Carl Cori managed to tug at my heart strings a little. They were both born in 1896 and lived in Prague. Carl was basically groomed from birth to be a professor. Gerty was fortunate enough to have a family who encouraged her to pursue a higher education, despite the challenges for being a Jewish woman. She was one of only a handful of women studying medicine at her university. It was here where she met Carl, a fellow student at the university, for the first time. They were inseparable from the start. After they graduated, they got married. They moved to Buffalo, New York a few years later to escape the pressures in Europe brought by World War II.

            Carl absolutely refused any job where he and Gerty could not work together. They were met with some resistance, but soon everyone knew of Gerty’s competence as a biochemist. Despite working together, Gerty was still paid a much lower wage than her husband. But they still continued on with their work. It was Gerty who had the main ideas, and her husband supported her through and through. Together, they will eventually publish fifty papers in a span of nine years. During the 1920s, it was understood that sugar is used as energy for the body and that insulin helped regulate sugar levels in diabetics. However, the exact process was unknown. Gerty’s own father had died from diabetes, and this is what influenced her to focus on sugar metabolism.

Through tireless research, the Coris figured out how humans processed sugar for energy. They discovered this process in 1929, and named it the Cori cycle. How it works is that glucose in the liver is transported to the muscles. Once the glucose is used for its energy, it turns into lactic acid. The lactic acid is then processed in the liver and turned into glycogen. The glycogen is broken down into glucose, and the cycle starts over. The enzyme that transforms glycogen into glucose was discovered to be phosphorylase. Together, the Coris also managed to make glycogen in a test tube. This was the first time such a large, complicated molecule was created in a tube. For their efforts, they were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947. Their discovery helped further research concerning diabetes. The Coris’ lab eventually

            Although they co-discovered the Cori cycle, it was Carl who received countless job offers. However, he ended up turning down most of them because they wouldn’t allow Gerty to work with him. Soon, Gerty would develop a bone marrow disease that severely weakened her.  She absolutely refused to quit her research. Carl would even carry her around her lab when she could no longer walk. She continued to work in her lab until the day she died in 1957. Gerty’s and Carl’s story shows how much we need to support our lady scientists out there. Even today, women only take up about a quarter of the STEM work force. Thankfully, the number of women studying science is on the rise. The important thing is to support women in their research and to encourage little girls that they truly can be whoever they want to be when they grow up. Who knows, maybe one day one of those little girls will make a discovery that will shock the world down to its core.

 

Sources
“Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World,” written and Illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky

Gerty Cori- Facts: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1947/cori-gt-facts.html

Gerty T. Cori (1896-1957): http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mig/bios/corig.html

Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori:  https://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_69.html

 

Carl and Gerty Cori and Carbohydrate Metabolism: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/carbohydratemetabolism.html