Paul Karrer

He was married to Helena Froelich in 1914. They had 2 sons.

He died at the age of 82 on June 18, 1971 in Zurich. His wife died in 1972.

The prestigious Paul Karrer Gold Medal was established in his honor in 1959 by a group of leading companies in this field such as CIBA AG, J. R. Geigy, F. Hoffman la Roche & Co. AG, Sandoz AG, Societe des Produits Nestle AG and Dr. A. Wander AG. It is awarded annually or biannually to an outstanding Chemist who delivers a lecture at the University of Zurich.

Paul Karrer was born in Moscow, Russia to Paul Karrer and Judi Lerch Karrer, both Swiss nationals on 21st April 1889. His father was a Dentist.

In 1892, the family returned to Switzerland, where Karrer did his schooling at Lenzburg, Aarau.

Paul Karrer studied Chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner and received his Ph.D in 1911. He worked as an Assistant with his professor for another year there.

He began an independent study of organic arsenic compounds and because of his further interest, went to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1912 to work with Paul Ehrlich, the famous German Drug Chemist and was there for six years.

In 1918, he returned to Zurich, where he was appointed a reader at the University of Zurich and in 1919, he became Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Chemical Institute there.

During 1920s he confined his studies mainly to the pigments of plants and natural products. In 1930s he solved the structures of Carotene and Lycopene which was a puzzle since long.

Karrer was very interested in Plant pigments and as he investigated the properties of Carotenoids, he came to know that one of its variants, beta-carotene, has a structure very similar to Vitamin A, also known as retinol, present in the eye. Lack of Vitamin A causes Night Blindness. By 1930, he deduced that beta-carotene is indeed converted to Vitamin A in animal bodies and came forth with its structure.

He received the prestigious Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1937 for his work on Carotenoids, flavins and Vitamins A and B2. He shared the prize with Walter Norman Haworth for his work in Vitamin C and Carbohydrates.

Dr. Karrer was given honorary degrees by Universities in Basel, Breslau, Lousanne, Zurich, Lyons, Paris, Sofia, London, Turin, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Strasbourg.

Apart from Nobel Prize, he also won Marcel Benoist Prize and Cannizzaro prize, which are also major awards in the field of Chemistry.