The Nobel Prize
in Chemistry 1929The Nobel Prize
in Chemistry 1929Presentation Speech by Professor H.G. Söderbaum, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on December 10, 1929
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
The fermentation of liquids containing sugar - there we have a chemical reaction
older than all chemical science. The point of time when men first began to take
this reaction into their service is really lost in the mists of antiquity, before
the beginning of history. The peculiar and apparently self-caused process by
which an innocent fruit juice is transformed with the active formation of scum,
into a drink which is either stimulating or intoxicating according to the quantity
partaken, attracted attention in the very earliest times; and to many peoples
it appeared so wonderful that nothing less than the cooperation of a divinity
seemed to them possible as an explanation.
Our enlightened time has scarcely the right to marvel at this, when we take
into consideration how long a time science has since required to obtain an acceptable
conception of the nature of fermentation. Here we stand face to face with one
of the most complicated and difficult problems of chemical research. Little
more than a couple of centuries separate us from the time when men first began
to perceive that the fermenting substance was sugar, which under the influence
of a certain something was decomposed, with carbonic acid and ethyl alcohol
as the final products of the decomposition.
But what this "something" was, and how it worked, still remained unsolved questions,
long defying the most penetrating attempts at interpretation. It was not until
our own days that it has been vouchsafed to us to have a fairly satisfactory
answer to these questions, but even here the process of development has been
slow, toilsome, and it took place, so to speak, in several instalments.
In carrying out the provisions of Alfred Nobel's Will, the Swedish Academy of
Sciences has already once before had its attention directed to this sphere of
research. That was in 1907, when Eduard Buchner was awarded the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry for his discovery of non-cellular fermentation. At the time complaints
were raised in certain quarters against this award as being insufficiently justified.
Seen in the perspective of distance in time, however, Buchner's discovery has
more and more stood out as a line of demarcation between two different epochs,
pointing the way to a new phase in the history of the chemistry of fermentation.
Buchner's discovery marked the final decision in a long struggle between two
distinct schools - one, the older one, represented by Justus von Liebig the
other, the younger one, represented by Louis Pasteur. According to the former
school, fermentation was a purely chemical process, evoked by an unorganized
ferment with unstable properties, which were imparted to the fermenting substance
and thereby brought about its decomposition. According to the latter school,
it was rather a physiological process, inseparably connected with the vital
act of a microorganism known as the "fungus of fermentation". Buchner's discovery
made it evident that to some extent both were right, but also to some extent
both were wrong, and, consequently, that the truth lay between the two.
But the value of the discovery makes itself known in a still more definite way
through the impulse it has given to later research. In fact, during the last
three decades that research has made such great advances, has given such an
enlarged insight into the mechanism of the process of fermentation, that the
Academy of Sciences has found the time ripe once again to award a Nobel Prize
in this department. In so doing the Academy has deemed it right to divide equally
the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the present year between Professor Arthur Harden
and Professor Hans von Euler.
Buchner assumed in the yeast juice the presence of a uniform
ferment or enzyme, known as "zymase".
When, however, Harden and his fellow-workers filtered a quantity of Buchner's
yeast-juice through a gelatine filter, known as an "ultrafilter", and thereby
split it up into two fractions (a filtrate and a sediment that did not pass
through the filter), the curious state of things occurred that neither of these
fractions was any longer able to bring about fermentation, but that after being
mixed with one another they recovered that capacity.
Harden explained this by saying that a high-molecular enzyme, the zymase proper,
was left on the filter, which let through a low-molecular complementary enzyme,
which for the sake of brevity was called co-enzyme or co-zymase.
Another no less important advance is made in Harden's demonstration of the hitherto
neglected part played by phosphoric acid in the process of fermentation. It
has been found that a certain addition of phosphate gives rise to an equivalent
amount of carbonic acid and ethyl alcohol. This effect is associated with the
formation of one or more definite compounds between sugar and phosphoric acid
- known as the "zymo-phosphates", amongst which a glucose monophosphate and
a glucose diphosphate are to be regarded as the most important.
In the same measure as research in this department has made new conquests, a
clearer and clearer insight has been gained into the importance of this discovery.
In particular the work of von Euler and his pupils during the last few years
greatly contributed to the unravelling of the mechanism of phosphorization.
The primary function of phosphoric acid in fermentation consists, according
to von Euler, in the fact that in cooperation with an enzyme it gives rise to
glucose monophosphate, identical with the monophosphate discovered by Harden
and Robison. This phosphate afterwards undergoes a mutation in the presence
of co-zymase, inasmuch as a glucose diphosphate and an active glucose are formed,
after which the latter yields the necessary material for the subsequent stages
of the fermentation.
This demonstration of the part of mutase played by the co-zymase, or in other
words of the identity of co-zymase and co-mutase, is of fundamental importance,
for it has fully revealed the central position in the process of fermentation
of the complementary enzyme in question.
The researches of von Euler and his pupils have further led to the concentration
of the co-zymase and to a far more exact study of its properties than had been
previously possible. They have been able to determine approximately its molecular
weight, which has been found to be about 490; and they have also been able to
draw certain definite conclusions concerning its chemical nature, which make
it highly probable that we have here what the chemists call a pentosenucleoside.
The production of a co-zymase with a high activity has also shown in a brilliant
manner the character of that enzyme as a specific activator.
Finally, what gives special interest to the study to the complicated reaction
mechanism of the fermentation of sugar is that it has been possible to draw
from it important conclusions concerning carbohydrate metabolism in general
in both the vegetable and the animal organism.
The brief summary which has now been given, and which, in
view of the scanty time allowed, has necessarily been extremely fragmentary,
will in any case probably have shown that there is an extremely intimate connection
between the researches of Harden and von Euler in this field. On the one hand,
the fundamental discoveries of Harden have formed the precondition and point
of departure for the various work of von Euler; and on the other hand, it is
only the work of the latter that has made fully evident the importance of Harden's
discovery.
Under such circumstances the Academy of Sciences has not hesitated this time
to avail itself of the expedient that is offered by the Statutes of the Nobel
Foundation of dividing the prize between two equally meritorious scientists.
Professor Harden. When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
resolved to adjudge to you, together with Professor von Euler, this year's Nobel
Prize in Chemistry on account of your important contributions to our knowledge
of alcoholic fermentation, the Academy had let herself guided by a firm conviction
that these contributions had opened indeed a new chapter in the investigation
of that very complicated matter.
It is with the most sincere gratification that I have the honour of conveying
to you the congratulations of the Academy on this distinction, the outward signs
of which you are now about to receive.
Professor von Euler. It is a great pleasure to the Swedish Academy of Sciences to be able to award this time the Alfred Nobel's Prize also to one of her members, and so much more since during a long series of years we have been in the position to follow from nearby your energetic, persevering, and systematic investigations. The Academy is also firmly convinced that the distinction which has fallen upon you today, will not contain for you the temptation to rest on laurels already obtained, but that on the contrary it will mean a stimulus to continued and, as we all hope, successful work in the service of biochemistry.
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966