Edmond H. Fischer was a pioneering biochemist born on April 6, 1920, in Shanghai, China, to Swiss parents with French and Austrian heritage. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Geneva in 1947, where he conducted research on enzyme purification before relocating to the United States. In 1953, he joined the faculty of the University of Washington, Seattle, where he would establish his enduring research legacy and remain affiliated for the rest of his career. Fischer achieved full professorship in 1961 and became professor emeritus in 1990, though he continued active research well beyond retirement. He passed away on August 27, 2021, in Seattle, Washington, at the age of 101, having transformed our understanding of fundamental cellular processes.
Fischer's most groundbreaking contribution, made in collaboration with Edwin G. Krebs, was the discovery of reversible protein phosphorylation as a fundamental biological regulatory mechanism. In the mid-1950s, they demonstrated how proteins can be regulated through the addition and removal of phosphate groups, a process controlled by specific enzymes they identified as protein kinases and phosphatases. Their seminal work on glycogen phosphorylase revealed the molecular mechanism behind enzyme activation and established phosphorylation as a universal regulatory switch in cellular function. This discovery transformed biochemical research by explaining how cells respond to external signals and control vital processes including metabolism, growth, and differentiation through simple chemical modifications.
The profound significance of Fischer and Krebs' work was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992, nearly four decades after their initial discovery. Their research opened an entirely new field that revealed protein phosphorylation as a universal regulatory mechanism controlling most aspects of cellular life. This knowledge directly enabled the development of kinase-inhibiting drugs, with more than 75 such therapeutics approved in the 21st century for treating cancer, diabetes, and inflammatory diseases. Fischer's later work extended these principles to tyrosine phosphorylation, which he studied with Nick Tonks, further illuminating pathways critical to cell growth and cancer development, cementing his legacy as a foundational figure in modern molecular biology.
