Otto Meyerhof, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was born in Hanover, Germany, the son of a merchant. He studied in Freiburg, Berlin, Strasbourg, and Heidelberg,1 receiving the MD degree in 1909, with an inaugural thesis on psychological theory—the first of several contributions on abstract or psychological thinking. Following graduation, Meyerhof entered the medical clinic of Ludwig Krehl; there he first met Otto Warburg, biochemist of note who had a great influence in directing his research into natural phenomena. In the following years they collaborated (especially on the metabolism of sea-urchin eggs) at the Marine Zoological Laboratory in Naples, an international meeting place for biologists.
In 1912, Meyerhof settled in Kiel as privatdocent, and subsequently began his biochemical and physiological investigations of muscular contraction. He extended the observations of Fletcher and Hopkins on the formation of lactic acid in the living cell and developed a comprehensive theory of the