Gerty Cori Helps Explain How the Body Recycles Fuel

In 1914, Gerty Theresa Radnitz gained admission to the medical school of Karl-Ferdinands-Universitat in Prague, an uncommon path for a woman in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Having realized at sixteen that she wanted to practice medicine, she had spent two years studying the extensive prerequisites in Latin, mathematics, and natural sciences that girls' lyceums did not provide. During an anatomy class, she met fellow medical student Carl Ferdinand Cori. The pair graduated together in 1920, married that same year, and moved to Vienna. There, Gerty worked in the pediatrics unit of Carolinen Children's Hospital, studying temperature regulation and blood disorders amid severe postwar food shortages and rising anti-Semitism.

Seeking better professional opportunities, the couple immigrated to the United States, Carl in 1922 and Gerty six months later, to take up positions at the New York State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease in Buffalo. Even though administrative leadership threatened Gerty with dismissal if she persisted in collaborating with her husband, the two continued their shared research into how animal bodies process sugars. They divided publication credits based on who contributed the greater share of work for each paper, and Gerty also authored eleven articles independently. In 1929, they formulated the theoretical cycle showing how muscular glycogen converts into lactic acid before being resynthesized and stored elsewhere in the body.