Otto Meyerhof helped lay the foundations for modern bioenergetics, the application of the principles of thermodynamics (the science of physics in relation to heat and mechanical action) to the analysis of chemical processes going on within the living cell. Meyerhof's research attempted to explain the function of a cell in terms of physics and chemistry; his research into the chemical processes of the muscle cell paved the way for the full understanding of the breakdown of glucose to provide body energy. For his discovery of the fixed relationship between the consumption of oxygen and the metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle, Meyerhof shared the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Born Otto Fritz Meyerhof on April 12, 1884, in Hannover, he was the second child and first son of Felix Meyerhof, a Jewish merchant, and Bettina May Meyerhof. Brought up in a comfortable middle class home, Meyerhof attended secondary...