Fischer, Hermann 1888-1960

Hermann Otto Laurenz Fischer was born in 1888 in Würzburg, Bavaria. His father was Emil Fischer, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1902. Hermann Fischer was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Berlin, and received his doctorate in chemistry at Jena in 1912. During World War I he served in the German army's chemical warfare unit; his two older brothers died during the war, events which contributed to his father's suicide in 1919. Soon after the war Fischer was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Berlin. He remained there until 1932, when, troubled by the rise of Hitler, he took up a position as Professor of Chemistry at the Pharmaceutical Institute of Universität Basel in Switzerland. In 1937, he left Europe altogether, becoming Research Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Banting Institute of the University of Toronto. His final move was in 1948, when he joined the newly-established biochemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he would remain until his retirement in 1957. He continued to be active in research until his death on March 9, 1960. According to a University of California obituary, Fischer's outstanding research accomplishments include "the preparation by chemical means of a number of phosphorylated sugars which have been shown to be intermediates in the metabolism of carbohydrates. One of these, glyceraldehyde phosphate, a key compound in the reactions involving the chemistry of respiration and fermentation, is known as the 'Fischer ester.' He also pioneered studies on the synthesis of phospholipids and on the determination of structure and configuration of the inositols" (University of California: In Memoriam, April 1961).