Nobel Prize Recipient. Otto Heinrich Warburg received international recognition after being awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was given the coveted award, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "for his discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme." Greatly recognized for his research in the scientific community, he received 51 Nobel candidacy nominations. Although he is recognized today for his pioneer research in cancer, he did not receive the Nobel Prize for this research as many might assume. In 1928 he concluded that the respiration enzyme he was looking for was a red ferrous pigment related to the blood pigment, hemoglobin. This discovery has opened a host of interests in the fields of cellular metabolism and cellular respiration. Born the son of noted physicist Emil Warburg, he had an Orthodox Jewish ancestry for five centuries from his father, yet his father had converted as an adult to Christianity. His mother was a protestant. Earning his Doctorate of Chemistry in 1906, he studied at the University of Berlin under Emil Fischer, 1902 Nobel Prize recipient. At the University of Heidelberg, he received his second doctorate in medicine in 1911. For his postgraduate studies, he performed research at the Naples Marine Biological Station in Naples, Italy from 1908 to 1914. There he performed research on sea urchin eggs after fertilization monitoring the oxygen consumption, thus proving that the fertilized egg the rate of respiration increases as much as sixfold. His experiments also proved iron is essential for the development of the larval stage. Being an excellent horseman, he served during World War I as an officer in the elite German Cavalry Regiment, Uhlan, and was awarded for bravery the First-Class Iron Cross. After the war, he was appointed in 1918 to a professorship at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin. Besides receiving the Nobel Prize in 1931, he was named the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology, which was established with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States. Researching for over the next 50 years at his laboratory, Warburg would develop his many theories. He hypothesized that cancer is caused by tumor cells generating energy mainly by anaerobic breakdown of Glucose, thus cancer should be interpreted as a mitochondrial dysfunction. Since cancer thrived in an acid-based environment, keeping the body in an alkaline state is healthier. Later, he added environmental toxins to this theory. He demonstrated that cancer cells could be destroyed by radiation. In January of 2006, an article from the University of Jena in Germany announced that Warburg’s hypothesis about cancer was a reality. Prior to World War II, the Nazi Party’s Nuremberg Laws removed professionals from their positions if they were Jewish or descended from a Jewish ancestry. Warburg was removed from teaching positions but allowed to continue his research. For his research on nicotinamide, the mechanism and enzymes involved in fermentation and the discovery of flavin, he was nominated as a candidate for the 1944 Nobel Prize and chosen by the Nobel Committee, but the Nazi Party refused his acceptance as a decree was issued in 1937 forbidding Germans from accepting Nobel Prizes. He did have the satisfaction of having three scientists receiving the Nobel Prize after doing research in his laboratory under his instructions. In 1943 Warburg relocated his laboratory to the village of Liebenburg on the outskirts of Berlin to avoid the Allied army bombings of the city. In 1945, the Russians confiscated his equipment, but he was not harm. His laboratory was later rebuilt in Berlin’s American zone, Dahlem. Accused of collaboration under the Nazi regime, he was nevertheless readmitted to the global scientific community after World War II, as there were no solid grounds for this remark. He did not resist or collaborate with the Nazi forces. The Rockefeller Foundation offered him a position in the United States prior to the war and after the war but he refused. He published 508 scientific articles and five books. Among his many publications are “Metabolism in Tumors” in 1926, “Catalytic Effects of Living Matter” in 1928, “Heavy Metals as Groups of Effects of Ferments” in 1946, “Hydrogen-transferring Ferments” in 1948, “Mechanism of Photosynthesis” in 1951, “Development of Cancer Cells” in 1955, and “Further Development of Cell Physiological Methods” in 1962. Living an isolated life in his world of science, he never married and resided in an apartment at the Institute with his long-time secretary, Jacob Heiss. With daily exercise and an organic diet, Warburg remained very active in the laboratory into his 80s. Although he always refused any honorary degrees and other ceremonial presentations, at the age of eighty-two, he received his honorary degree from Oxford University. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in London, England and a member to Academies in Berlin, Halle, Copenhagen, Rome, and India. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the German Order of Merit in 1952. He fractured his femur in 1968 and had the complication of deep vein thrombosis in the calf of his legs. This complication never completely resolved, thus in 1970, he die from a pulmonary embolism that traveled to his lungs from his legs. Heiss was his heir.