Carl Ferdinand Cori, ForMemRS (December 5, 1896 – October 20, 1984) was a Czech-American biochemist and pharmacologist born in Prague (then in Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic) who, together with his wife Gerty Cori and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, received a Nobel Prize in 1947 for their discovery of how the glucose derivative glycogen (animal starch) is broken down and resynthesized in the body for use as a store and source of energy. In 2004, both Coris were designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in recognition of their work that elucidated carbohydrate metabolism. Education and early life Carl was the son of Carl Isidor Cori (1865, Brüx [], Bohemia, Austrian Empire1954, Vienna), a zoologist, and Maria Cori (née Lippich; 1870, Graz1922, Prague), a daughter of the Italian-Bohemian/Austrian physician (1838, Padua1913, Prague). The Cori family came from the Papal State (later the Roman Republic, today's Central Italy) to the royal Bohemian crownland, (Monarchical Austria at the end of the 17th century). Carl Ferdinand's grandfather Eduard Cori (18121889) was an administrative officer and beekeeper in Brüx, and his grandmother was Rosina Trinks (?1909). Carl Ferdinand's younger sister Margarete Cori (born 1905) was a lecturer in Prague and the wife of the Bohemian geneticist Felix Mainx (1900, Prague1983, Vienna). He grew up in Trieste, where his father Carl Isidor was the director of the Marine Biological Station. In late 1914 the Cori family moved to Prague and Carl entered the medical school of Charles University in Prague. While studying there he met his future wife Gerty Theresa Radnitz. He was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army and served in the ski corps, and later was transferred to the sanitary corps, for which he set up a laboratory in Trieste. At the end of the war Carl completed his studies, graduating with Gerty in 1920. Carl and Gerty married that year and worked together in clinics in Vienna. Their only child, Tom, married Anne, a daughter of the American constitutional lawyer and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly. Career Carl was invited to Graz to work with Otto Loewi to study the effect of the vagus nerve on the heart (Loewi would receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936 for this work). While Carl was in Graz, Gerty remained in Vienna. A year later Carl was offered a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases (now Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center) in