Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell, 6 July 1903 - 15 August 1982

Abstract

It has often been remarked that Sweden has fostered an exceptionally high proportion of scientists of the first rank in relation to its small population. The long list of Swedish Nobel Laureates includes, as well as Hugo Theorell, both The Svedberg and Arne Tiselius, with whom Theorell worked for a short time in Uppsala in 1932 in his early studies of the molecular mass of myoglobin. Theorell himself, however, always acknowledged Otto Warburg as his principal mentor. His work on the chemical nature and constitution of the old yellow enzyme in Warburg’s laboratory in Berlin in 1933-35 opened up the whole field of oxidation-reduction enzymes that use common non-protein cofactors. It was to this field, and particularly to the chemical nature of the interactions between the enzyme proteins and their cofactors— whether flavin, haem or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide— that Theorell devoted most of his subsequent researches. With his death we have lost one of the founders of enzymology and protein chemistry.