Edmond Henri Fischer (April 6, 1920 – August 27, 2021) was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes. From 2007 until 2014, he was the Honorary President of the World Cultural Council. At the time of his death at age 101 in 2021, he was the oldest living Nobel Prize laureate.
Early life
Fischer was born on April 6, 1920, in the Shanghai International Settlement, China. His father, who was Jewish, practiced as a lawyer in Shanghai before the various consular courts in the city. Fischer's maternal grandfather founded the Courrier de Chine in Shanghai, the first newspaper published in French in China; he also helped to establish L'Ecole Municipale Française in Shanghai, where Fischer attended primary school.
At age seven, Fischer and his two elder brothers, Raoul and George, were sent to the Swiss boarding school La Châtaigneraie, near his mother's hometown in Vevey. He picked up mountain climbing and skiing during his time at the school. While at high school Fischer was admitted to the Geneva Conservatory of Music as a pianist and he also considered becoming a professional musician.
right|thumb|260px|Reversible protein phosphorylation
Career and research
After his PhD, Fischer went to the United States in 1950 for postdoctoral research. He was supposed to take up a position at Caltech, but he was also, unexpectedly, offered a position at the University of Washington in Seattle. Seattle reminded Fischer and his wife of Switzerland so they chose to settle there.
Protein phosphorylation/hydrolysis cycle
Six months after his arrival in Seattle, Fischer learnt of a fellow biochemist from the same university, Edwin G. Krebs, who was also trying to answer a similar question on where muscles received the energy that they needed to contract. Fischer began collaborating with Krebs, and the duo began their investigations on glycogen phosphorylase, an enzyme that had been discovered by the husband and wife pair of Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori who had won the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1947.
While the importance of the discovery was not fully recognised in 1955, the discovery became core to explaining one of the fundamental mechanisms that cells use to communicate with one another. He was awarded the Werner Prize from the Swiss Chemical Society, the Lederle Medical Faculty Award, the Prix Jaubert from the University of Geneva, the Senior Passano Award and the Steven C. Beering Award from Indiana University. He received Doctorates Honoris Causa from the University of Montpellier, France and the University of Basel, Switzerland. Fischer was a member of the St. George's University-based Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation (WINDREF) Scientific Advisory Board from 1994 to 2021.
See also
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates