Hugo Theorell
Swedish biochemist
Who was Hugo Theorell?
Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell (6 July 1903 – 15 August 1982) was a Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize laureate in medicine. He was born in Linköping as the son of Thure Theorell and his wife Armida Bill. Theorell went to Secondary School at Katedralskolan in Linköping and passed his examination there on 23 May 1921. In September, he began to study medicine at the Karolinska Institute and in 1924 he graduated as a Bachelor of Medicine. He then spent three months studying bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris under Professor Albert Calmette. In 1930 he obtained his M.D. degree with a theory on the lipids of the blood plasma, and was appointed professor in physiological chemistry at the Karolinska Institute. His contribution also consisted of the theory of the toxic effects of sodium fluoride on the cofactors of crucial human enzymes.
Historical significance
Theorell, who dedicated his entire career to enzyme research, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1955 for discovering oxidoreductase enzymes and their effects.