Edmond H. Fischer

In 1948 while he was working in the University of Geneva, Edmond H. Fischer married Nelly Gagnaux . The couple had two sons, François and Henri Fischer. Nelly died in 1961.

In 1963, Fischer married Beverley Bullock. From this union, he has a step daughter, Paula Bullock, from Beverley’s first marriage.

Edmond Henri Fischer was born on April 6, 1920, in Shanghai International Settlement, China. His father, Oscar Fischer, an Austria-born doctorate in law and business, migrated to Shanghai soon after finishing his education at Vienna.

Edmond’s mother, Renée Tapernoux, was originally from Switzerland. Her father was initially a journalist at the French newspaper L'Aurore; later he settled with his family in Shanghai.

Young Edmond began his education at l'Ecole Municipale Française, established by his maternal grandfather. By the time he was seven, he was sent to La Châtaigneraie, a large boarding school in Geneva, along with his two brothers; Raoul and Georges. Later Raoul Fischer became a mechanical engineer and Georges, an attorney.

In 1935, Edmond enrolled at the Collège de Genève (now known as the Collège de Calvin) for his secondary education. Concurrently, he also studied piano under Johnny Aubert at Geneva Conservatory of Music. Although at one point of time, he thought of taking it up professionally he later decided against it.

In 1939, Edmond received his Maturité Fédérale. Initially, he wanted to study microbiology; but was dissuaded from it by Fernand Chodat, the Professeur of Bacteriology, because there was little scope for it in Switzerland. Therefore, he entered the School of Chemistry at the University of Geneva.

Soon after receiving his degree in 1947, Edmond H. Fischer joined University of Geneva as a Privat Docent in Enzymology and remained in that position till 1953. There he worked with Prof. Kurt H. Meyer on polysaccharides, a common source of energy in many foods.

The field of Enzymology was not very well developed in Europe during that period. Therefore, he decided to go to the United States of America for postdoctoral research. The death of Professor Meyer in April 1952 also added to his urge to travel abroad.

In 1953, Fischer left for the United States of America on a Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship. His destination was California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. As he reached New York, he found that his friends had arranged for some seminars at Pittsburg and Madison.

Although he received job offer from both those places, he moved to Pasadena and joined Caltech. However, within a short period he received another offer from the University of Washington, located at Seattle. He accepted this offer, mainly because the place reminded him of Switzerland, where he had grown up since the age of seven.

Accordingly, Fischer joined University of Washington as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in 1953. The Department had only seven faculty members and all of them became good friends. He especially teamed up with Edwin Gerhard Krebs, who had joined the university in 1948.

Fischer’s work with Krebs on reversible protein phosphorylation is his most significant contribution to biochemistry. They started by studying how muscles get energy to contract or expand and in the process discovered a phenomenon called ‘reversible protein phosphorylation’.

They explained that in this process, a kinase enzyme called protein kinase moves a phosphate group from adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to a protein, thus changing its shape and the function. The altered protein is now able to take part in the required biological process.

When the process is completed, a protein phosphatase removes the phosphate and the protein goes back to its original state. In this way, reversible protein phosphorylation controls a large number of metabolic processes, such as blood pressure, brain signals, immune responses etc