Photo credit: Emil Fischer — File:Hermann Emil Fischer. Photograph by Atelier Victoria, 1895. Wellcome V0027668 (cropped).jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY 4.0
Emil Fischer
1852–1919 · Germany · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1902
Determined the structures of sugars and purines, synthesized glucose and peptides and proposed the lock-and-key picture of enzymes.
Nobel Prize work
Nobel 1902 “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses.” Using phenylhydrazine, he converted sugars into crystalline osazones and mapped the stereochemistry of glucose and its relatives, leading to the first synthesis of glucose. He also built caffeine, theobromine and other purine derivatives from simple materials, establishing systematic organic synthesis and the “lock and key” model of enzyme specificity.