Otto (Heinrich) Warburg

Biochemist, born in Freiburg Baden, SW Germany. He studied at Berlin and Heidelberg universities, worked in the Kaiser Wilhelm (later Max Planck) Institute from 1913, and became director in 1953. Much of his work was on cellular respiration, for which he devised the Warburg manometer to measure oxygen uptake of living tissue. He was awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Otto Heinrich Warburg (October 8, 1883, Freiburg im Breisgau – August 1, 1970, Berlin), son of Emil Warburg, was a German physiologist and medical doctor. He was director (1931–1953) of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (now Max Planck Institute) for cell physiology at Berlin. He investigated the metabolism of tumors and the respiration of cells, particularly cancer cells.

Warburg reported the fundamental difference between normal and cancerous cells to be the ratio of glycolysis to respiration. Later, he summarized this hypothesis (meanwhile named 'Warburg's hypothesis') as a book entitled The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer which he presented in lecture at the meeting of the Nobel-Laureates on June 30, 1966 at Lindau, Lake Constance, Germany. In this speech, Warburg presented evidence proving anaerobiosis to be a primary cause of cancerous cells. In recent years, Warburg's hypothesis re-gained significant attention amongst scientists due to several discoveries linking impaired mitochondrial function as well as impaired respiration to growth, division and expansion of cancer cells.