About Her Life
Gerty Theresa Cori, née Radnitz, was born in 1896 in Prague. She was home-schooled until the age of 10, when she began attending a girls' preparatory school. In those days, girls' schools weren't nearly as challenging as those for boys, and they often paid more attention to teaching girls how to be proper young ladies than to nurturing their minds. But young Gerty became interested in math and science, thanks to her uncle, who was a professor of pediatric medicine at Carl Ferdinand University in Prague. After finishing high school at 16, she wanted to study at a university, but admission required math, science, and Latin, and her schooling hadn't offered much instruction in those areas. So she entered a college-prep school and finished its curriculum in only two years.

Gerty enrolled in medical school at the German University of Prague in 1914. In her first semester she, a talkative extrovert, met the quiet and reserved Carl Cori. Though their personalities differed, the two shared the same career ambition: to become medical researchers. They also shared hobbies, including hiking, mountain climbing, and gardening.

Gerty and Carl began collaborating on research while they were still students. Unfortunately World War I soon forced Carl to interrupt his studies to serve in the Austrian army, but he still managed to graduate on time. After they both graduated with their medical degrees in 1920, they were married.

The Coris moved to Vienna, Austria, where Gerty worked in a children's hospital and Carl in a laboratory. In the aftermath of the war, times were hard for all Europeans and food was scarce. Gerty was given dietary supplements at her hospital but refused them, feeling that the patients needed them more than she did. She soon developed xerophthalmia, a disease related to vitamin deficiency. This, combined with rising anti-Semitism in Austria, prompted the Coris, both Jewish, to immigrate to the United States .

Carl left for America first, having accepted a job at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, New York, in 1922. Gerty stayed behind in Vienna at the children's hospital, waiting until she could find work in America. In those days it was unusual for a married couple to live apart for any length of time, and it was a testament to Gerty’s independence and dedication to her career that she stayed on alone in Vienna. Finally, six months later, Gerty got a job at the same institute as Carl, and she joined him in Buffalo. In 1928 the Coris became U.S. citizens.

The two stayed in Buffalo until 1931, when Carl left to become a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Gerty was hired too, as a research associate, despite her equivalent degrees and comparable research experience. It was not until 1943 that she was promoted to a faculty position. She became full professor in 1947, the same year that she and Carl were awarded the Nobel Prize "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen."

Around this time Gerty came down with myelosclerosis, a disease of the bone marrow. Eventually the disease claimed her life. She died in 1957 at the age of 61, leaving behind her husband and their one son.

For Further Reading on the Web

“The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1947,” from Nobelprize.org.