Nobel Prize Recipient. Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell, a Swedish biochemist, received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1955 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he received this coveted award "for his discoveries concerning the nature and mode of action of oxidation enzymes." An enzyme is a substance produced by a living organism, which acts as a catalyst to bring about a specific biochemical reaction. From 1937 he received 24 nominations for the Nobel candidacy in the category of Chemistry, with the majority being submitted after 1953. He received four nominations for the Nobel candidacy in the category of Physiology or Medicine. Receiving the award for a discovery made twenty years earlier, his discovery was the first stepping stone in the research of enzymes and he often mentioned this fact, giving credit to other scientists. Becoming the third generation to enter the medical field, his father, a surgeon in the Swedish army, was responsible for the regional medical center, and his grandfather was a railroad physician. After attending public schools, Hugo, as he was called, studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute, a medical research facility in Stockholm, and graduating in 1924 with a Bachelor Degree in Medicine. For three months he studied bacteriology at the Pasture Institute in Paris. Simultaneously, he was a member of the staff of the Medico-Chemical Institution, first as an associate assistant, then from 1928 to 1929 a temporary Associate Professor, where he did his initial research on lipids in the blood, obtaining 1930 his M.D. degree with a thesis on the lipids of the blood plasma. After receiving this degree, he was appointed lecturer in physiological chemistry at the Karolinska Institute. In 1931, he studied the molecular weight of myoglobin with the aid of the ultracentrifuge at the Svedberg's Institute at Uppsala University. In 1933 a Rockefeller Fellowship enabled him to go to Berlin-Dahlen to work with the biochemist and cell physiologist Otto Warburg, who had received the Nobel Prize in 1931. Theorell was the last of three Nobel Prize recipients that were Warburg's students. After his return to Sweden, Theorell was appointed in 1937 director of the new Biochemical Department of the Nobel Medical Institute in Stockholm. The department was transferred to a new Biochemical Institute in 1947. During World War II, when Sweden was neutral and isolated somewhat from the world, he did travel to Switzerland for lectures. While the war was raging, there were no exchange students studying with him. After the war, there were fewer foreign students in his laboratory. He helped many published their thesis often without his name being included. He appreciated music, becoming a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music, as well as chairman of the Stockholm Symphony Society. He played the violin and was told by a professional violinist that he " played better than Albert Einstein." On June 5, 1931 he married harpsichordist and pianist Elin Margit Elisabeth Alenius. The couple had a daughter and three sons. Their daughter died age two in 1935 from tuberculosis, and later, she was re-interred next to her father's grave. Besides music, he enjoyed growing roses, sailing, and making jigsaw puzzles. In January of 1965, he and his wife were in a serious automobile accident, with both receiving fractured legs. From this accident, he had to wear a brace the rest of his life. In 1967 he was elected president of the Swedish Academy of Science. In 1977 he published his autobiography, "Changing Winds." Besides his autobiography, he authored seven scientific textbooks. In 1954 a group of Swedish scientists approached a millionaire industrialist, Axel Wenner-Gren, with the proposal to establish a center for scientific conferences. The center was opened in 1961, naming Theorell the chairman of the board of management of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Wenner-Gren died the same year. A Wenner-Gren symposium was held there in Theorell's honor in 1970, on the occasion of his retirement from director of the Nobel Medical Institute. In 1971, several members of the organization were indicted for fraud including him, as the chairman of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Only the executive director of Wenner-Gren' s estate was found guilty of the crime, but Theorell was hurt by the ordeal, losing trust in an organization that he had much faith, yet staying in the position until 1976. After being hospitalized with a serious case of bronchitis in 1981, his health declined rapidly, with him dying in the summer of 1982. Besides the Nobel Prize, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 1957, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in London in 1959 and a member of several other learned societies. From 1967 to 1973, he was president of the International Union of Biochemists and from 1967 to 1968, the president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He received seven honorary doctorate degrees.