Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell

Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell was born at Linköping, Sweden, on July 6, 1903. He was the son of Thure Theorell and his wife Armida Bill. Theorell went to a State Secondary School for nine years in Linköping and passed his matriculation examination there on May 23, 1921. In September, 1921, he began to study medicine at the Karolinska Institute and in 1924 he graduated as a Bachelor of Medicine. He then spent three months studying bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris under Professor Calmette. In 1930 he obtained his M.D. degree with a theory on the lipids of the blood plasma, and was appointed professor in physiological chemistry at the Karolinska Institute.

Professor Theorell was a Nobel Prize winner and was the former head of the Nobel Institute's biochemistry department. Theorell, who dedicated his entire career to enzyme research, won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the oxidation enzyme and its effects. At the Nobel Institute his research lead to pioneering progress on ADH enzymes, which break down alcohol in the kidney. His work won praise in Sweden as well as around the world. And he received honorary degrees at universities in France, Belgium, Brazil and the United States.