Feodor Lynen

Facts

Feodor Lynen

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Feodor Lynen
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1964

Born: 6 April 1911, Munich, Germany

Died: 6 August 1979, Munich, Germany

Affiliation at the time of the award: Max-Planck-Institut für Zellchemie, Munich, Germany

Prize motivation: “for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism”

Prize share: 1/2

Work

Cholesterol is an important component in the body’s cells and plays a major role in several biochemical processes. Feodor Lynen and Konrad Bloch and their respective colleagues investigated how cholesterol and fatty acids are formed and converted in the body. Among other things, they showed that acetic acid is an important component in cholesterol and how the formation occurs in reactions with many steps. This knowledge is important for an understanding of heart disease and other illnesses in which changes in cholesterol formation can play a role.

To cite this section
MLA style: Feodor Lynen – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 12 Nov 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1964/lynen/facts/>

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