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Dr. Fischer gave the First Annual Langerhans-Virchow Lecture, in 2000
About Edmond H. Fischer, Ph.D.
 
  
Edmond H. Fischer, Ph. D. (click for full-sized image)
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Dr. Edmond H. Fischer was born in Shanghai in 1920. At age 7, he went to Switzerland where he carried out all his studies, receiving B.S. degrees in chemistry and biology and a Ph. D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Geneva. After a few years as a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation and a Private Docent at the University of Geneva, he spent a year at the California Institute of Technology. In 1953, he joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, where he is now Professor Emeritus.
     Within six months of his arrival in Seattle, he initiated his collaborative studies with Edwin G. Krebs on the regulation of glycogen phosphorylase. Fischer and Krebs went on to define the series of reactions in the cascade leading to the activation/inactivation of this enzyme as triggered by hormones and calcium. Since then, they have been working on the regulation of different cellular processes by reversible protein phosphorylation. Toward the end of his career, Dr. Fischer"s laboratory had been particularly interested in the identification, characterization and regulation of a variety of intracellular and receptor protein tyrosine phosphatases and their involvement in signal transduction, cell cycle progression and transformation.
     Dr. Fischer has served on numerous scientific advisory boards, including those for NIH and NSF, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Friedrich Miescher Institute of CIBA-GEIGY, the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, the Basel Institute for Immunology, the Scientific Governors of the Scripps Research Institute and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
     Dr. Fischer is a member or Foreign Associate of several Academies of Sciences and was awarded doctorate degrees honoris causa from a half-dozen U. S. and foreign universities. He received the Werner Medal of the Swiss Chemical Society (1952), the Prix Jaubert (1968), the Senior Passano Award (1988) and the Steven C. Beering Award (1991). In 1992, Drs. Fischer and Krebs shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discoveries concerning reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism.