Otto Heinrich Warburg

Otto Heinrich Warburg (8 October 1883 in Freiburg im Breisgau – 1 August 1970 in Berlin), son of physicist Emil Warburg, was a German biochemist and physiologist. In 1931 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "the discovery of the nature and function of the respiratory ferment". Numerous biochemists and later Nobel Prize winners such as George Wald, Hugo Theorell, Hans Adolf Krebs and Otto Meyerhof emerged from his scientific school.

In 1931, Warburg was named director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology. The institute was founded the previous year by a donation of the Rockefeller Foundation to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft. Nobel laureate George Wald, having completed his Ph.D. in zoology at Columbia University, received an award from the U.S. National Research Council to study with Warburg. During his time with Warburg, 1932–1933, Wald discovered vitamin A in the retina. Warburg continued with the institute as director, until 1967.

Otto was the son of physicist Emil Warburg, a German professor of physics at the Universities of Strassburg, Freiburg and Berlin. He was president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft from 1899 to 1905. His name is notably associated with the Warburg element of electrochemistry. He was a member of the Warburg family, a prominent German and American banking family of German Jewish descent. They are thought to have originated as the Venetian Jewish del Banco family, Anselmo and Abraham Ha Levi Kahana de Palenzuela from Spain, one of the wealthiest Sephardic German families in the early 16th century. Due to restrictions limiting Jewish involvement in banking, they moved to Bologna, and thence to Warburg, in Germany, in the 16th century, a place location that later took their name.

Pressure from the National Socialists became apparent after 1939, when he was classified as a "mischling" for his Jewish descent. In 1941, the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and Popular Education sought to have Warburg dismissed as head of the KWI for cell physiology. According to plans by the Reich Ministry employee Rudolf Mentzel, the Kaiser Wilhelm institute was to make way for a central institute for cancer research. But Warburg was put in a position by the General Secretary of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, Ernst Telschow, to resign from his post on 30 June 1941. However, after talks between Rudolf Mentzel, Ernst Telschow and Victor Brack, the head of Office II in the Führer's Chancellery (KdF), it was decided in June 1941 that Otto Warburg be allowed to remain in his position at the institute. Kaiser Wilhelm institute was classified as a "recognized military service company" and from 1943 to 1945 it was relocated to the lake house of Liebenberg Castle in the Templin district. After the Second World War, the institute was part of the German Research University in Berlin until it was incorporated into the Max Planck Society.

Warburg is still best known in cancer research today for the so-called Warburg hypothesis. He found that tumors had unusual levels of lactate, the product of anaerobic glycolysis, even though there was enough oxygen for mitochondrial combustion. From this he derived the hypothesis in 1930 that a disruption or disruption in the function of the mitochondria in cancer cells was the main reason for cancer growth. This assumption is a classic of basic medical research, but has always been controversial and is now considered outdated.

1. ↑ Personalakte von Otto Warburg im Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: II. Abt., Rep.67, Nr. 1504
2. ↑ Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft / Beständeübersicht: I. Abt., Rep. 50 – Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Zellphysiologie