Carl Ferdinand Cori and his wife, biochemist Gerty T. Cori, were prominent researchers in physiology, pharmacology, and biology. Their most important work involved carbohydrate metabolism (especially in tumors), phosphate processes in the muscles, the process of glucose-glycogen interconversion, and the action of insulin. The Coris shared the 1947 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine (along with the Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay) "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen."

Cori was born in Prague (Czech Republic), which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were Carl Isidor Cori, a professor of zoology at the German University of Prague, and Maria Lippich Cori. When Cori was still young, the family moved to Trieste, Italy, where his father had been appointed director of the Marine Biology Station. Cori studied at the Gymnasium in Trieste from 1906 to 1914, and then returned to Prague and began medical studies...