Otto Fritz Meyerhof was born inHannover, at Theaterplatz 16A (now:Rathenaustrasse 16A),[4][5] the son of wealthyJewish parents. In 1888, his family moved toBerlin, where Otto spent most of his childhood, and where he started his study ofmedicine. He continued these studies inStrasbourg andHeidelberg, from which he graduated in 1909, with a work titled "Contributions to the Psychological Theory of Mental Illness".
In Heidelberg, he met Hedwig Schallenberg. They married in 1914 and had three children together: a daughter, Bettina, and two sons, Gottfried (who after emigration used the anglicized name Geoffrey) and Walter.
To escape the increasing oppression of Jews by theNazi regime, in 1938 Meyerhof emigrated with his family to Paris.[7] After the fall of France in 1940, they fled to Marseille. Aided by theEmergency Rescue Committee, they left the country by ship to the United States that year. Meyerhof was appointed to a guest professorship at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Meyerhof died inPhiladelphia at the age of 67.[8] In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize, he was recognized for his contributions to the study of glycolysis, by the naming of the common series of reactions for the pathway inEukaryotes as theEmbden–Meyerhof–Parnas Pathway.[9]
^Walter Selke and Christian Heppner,The family of the Nobel Prize recipient Otto Meyerhof in Hannover, in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblaetter 71 (2017), p.156-166;ISBN978-3-86525-602-7
^Jean-Marc Chouraqui, Gilles Dorival, Colette Zytnicki,Enjeux d'Histoire, Jeux de Mémoire: les Usages du Passé Juif, Maisonneuve & Larose, 2006, p. 548[1]
