Presentation Speech by Professor H.G. Söderbaum, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on December 10, 1930
Your
Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
"Blood is a
very special liquid", this was asserted some 140 years ago by Goethe. When writing
these words and ascribing them to Mephistopheles he probably had in mind first
and foremost the mystical aura with which popular superstition has been wont to
invest since time immemorial the red river of life that flows in our blood vessels,
and the magical forces with which it had long been held to be endowed. The methodical
scientific research of a later age has however affirmed the phrase to a far greater
degree than its author could have surmised. Many and difficult have been the riddles
scientists have had to solve in research on blood. The number of those who have
applied their ingenuity to the solution of the riddle is large. It is the privilege
of this present generation to witness the raising of the veil of Isis which previously
concealed the solution from view. The research to which the Academy of Sciences
has felt itself constrained to award the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year is
exceptionally successful and significant.
Once the anatomists of
the 17th century had demonstrated with the aid of the microscope that blood is
a tissue - in the anatomical sense of the word - and that it consists partly of
extremely small cells, the so-called blood corpuscles, partly of a liquid substance,
the so-called plasma, it became the task of thc chemists and physiologists to
determine the composition of these constituents and their diverse functions in
the vital process. As to the red blood corpuscles in particular it was found that
their colour is due to an iron-containing substance, later called haemoglobin,
which, by virtue of its strong affinity to oxygen, is of fundamental importance
for the familiar changes venous blood undergoes in the lungs during respiration.
Haemoglobin can be separated into a protein substance, i.e. globin, and a red
substance, still containing iron which, after oxidation, with hydrochloric acid
yields a saltlike complex iron compound, called haemin. Considerable uncertainty
however prevailed for a long time even regarding the empirical formula of haemin,
and the uncertainty as to its internal chemical structure was even greater. Elementary
analysis showed that the haemin molecule contains a large number of carbon atoms
(the data fluctuated between 32 and 34) and an almost equal number of hydrogen
atoms, and also 4 oxygen atoms, 4 nitrogen atoms, 1 iron atom, and 1 chlorine
atom. To determine the manner in which all these atoms, numbering more than 70,
are linked, or in other words to determine the chemical constitution of haemin,
was one of the most difficult and complicated tasks with which any chemist could
be faced.
It was discovered that the haemin molecule can be converted
by certain chemical procedures into iron-free substances, called porphyrins, and
that the porphyrins can be broken down, by other procedures, into pyrrole derivatives,
i.e. into compounds containing four carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom in a closed
ring. It was clear that the road to an exact knowledge of the structure of the
blood pigments would involve detailed examination of these pyrroles and porphyrins.
This is the road which Professor Hans Fischer of Munich travelled, to reach
his destination with perseverance and determination; not only did he determine
completely the constitution of haemin and all its decomposition products: he also
prepared the blood pigments from their simplest constituents by synthesis, a scientific
achievement which would scarcely have been considered possible even a generation
ago. By this synthesis he crowned his researches which both in extent and in the
unbelievable difficulties associated with them deserve to be called a gigantic
labour.
Moreover, these researches were not wholly restricted to
blood pigments. Closely related pigments occur in Nature and not only in the blood.
These include the pigments in the bile, of which bilirubin is the best characterized
to date. Its constitution, too, has been determined by Fischer who established
the connection between this bile pigment and the blood pigment. Further, it was
discovered that the pigment in the pinions of certain birds is the copper salt
of a porphyrin, whereas the pigment which forms the dark spots on the eggs of
a large number of wild birds, the so-called ooporphyrin, has been found to be
blood pigment without iron. Even if I add that Fischer has demonstrated the occurrence
of haemin in yeast, all this is overshadowed by the fact that, chemically speaking,
the pigment of green plants, i.e. chlorophyll, is closely related with the red
blood pigment, and even derives, as Fischer has shown, from exactly the same parent
substance, as regards the porphyrins.
This shows that Nature in spite
of her extravagant diversity was sufficiently economical to use exactly the same
building material when constructing these two substances which are so greatly
different in appearance and occurrence.
Having completed his work
on the blood pigments and their components by the haemin synthesis, Fischer turned
with undiminished energy to research into chlorophyll. In this field, where a
scientist has previously gained a Nobel Prize, but where much work remained to
be done, conditions are even more complicated and the difficulties as a consequence
are even greater than in the other field. Nevertheless, Fischer obtained results
which are so important that the Academy has considered it fitting to include them
in the award.
What has been said, though necessarily brief, could
give some idea of the variety and range of Fischer's researches, and has shown
at the same time the singlemindedness that prevails in all this variety in that
a leading fundamental idea firmly combines the researches in a systematic whole.
These researches have in the main been concerned as we have seen with the
two most vital pigments, haemin and chlorophyll. Almost, we are tempted to say
that life is pigment, because oxygen transport, by means of blood pigment, to
the various tissues of the bodies of animals and humans, and carbon dioxide assimilation
in plants, due to chlorophyll, constitute two of the most fundamental processes
of organic life. It is therefore hardly possible to overestimate the importance
of detailed knowledge of these two vital factors. If we remember moreover that
the pyrrole complexes determined by Fischer are contained as basic components
partly in the principal catalysts of respiration, partly in an enzyme (catalase)
which is indispensable to all living cells, it will be found that the intrinsic
value of the researches on it is in full accord with the prize which will now
be awarded.
Herr Geheimrat
Fischer. The gold medal which you are about to receive shows, on the obverse,
the figure of Science, unveiling the goddess Isis. The symbol seems to me particularly
appropriate on the present occasion, because you yourself, dear colleague, have
solved previously veiled secrets of Nature in exactly the same manner.
By your analytical and synthetic work on the porphyrins, on the blood pigment,
on leaf pigments, and other related substances, you have accomplished an achievement
which can only be described a great feat in chemistry which will undoubtedly have
a beneficial effect on the most diverse branches of natural sciences.
To have mastered a multitude of individual results so successfully testifies not
only to untiring, I am tempted to say indefatigable energy, and to superior experimental
ability, but also to a rare determination and consistency of scientific thought,
which is rivalled by few examples in the history of our science.
In gratitude for your achievement, and with cordial congratulations, I now ask
you, in the name of our Academy of Sciences, to receive, from the hands of His
Majesty the King, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the year 1930.
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966
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