What do Nobel Prize winners say?

Otto Warburg

Born: 8-October-1883, Freiburg, Germany
Occupation: Physician, scientist
Nationality: German
Summary: The effect of oxygen on cancer.

German biochemist Otto Warburg has a double doctorate in chemistry and medicine and won the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his research in cellular respiration, demonstrating that cancer cells are anaerobic (without oxygen), or in terms of acidity. His father was a highly respected physician and in his childhood, Warburg was in the company of the "enlightened", such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Emil Fischer and Walther Nernst, near which he was frequently a guest.

According to Warburg "cancer, more than other diseases, has numerous secondary causes. But there is a primary cause to cancer. Summarizing, in a few words, the primary cause of cancer is the replacement of breathing oxygen in normal body cells by the fermentation of sugar".

Warburg has also written about the relationship between the pH of cancer cells and the environment. As long as fermentation was the metabolic activity of cancer cells, Warburg showed that cancer cells maintain a low pH level, up to 6.0, due to lactic acid production and the increased level of CO2. He is convinced of the direct relationship between pH and oxygen. A high pH means a higher concentration of oxygen in molecules, while a low pH means low oxygen.

Warburg was a member of the Academy of Berlin, Copenhagen and Rome. He became Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Oxford in 1965 and in 1963, the German Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology offered Otto Warburg the Medal for encouraging research and discoveries in these areas. The medal honors the great achievements of the physiologist in medicine and it represents the most important award given to German biochemists.