Nobel Prize Recipient. Konrad Bloch, a Prussian Empire-born American biochemist, received international acclaim after receiving the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing the prize jointly with Feodor Lynen. According to the Nobel Prize committee, the men received the award "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism." This was done while conducting research separately, with Bloch and other American researcher independently expanded Lynen's primary findings. Besides his discoveries with Lynen, he discovered that bile and a female sex hormone were made from cholesterol, which led to the discovery that all steroids were made from cholesterol. This knowledge is important for an understanding of heart disease and other illnesses in which changes in cholesterol formation can play a role. During the Nobel Prize presentation program, he gave an acceptance speech but also a Nobel Lecture, "The Biological Synthesis of Cholesterol" on December 11, 1964. Besides Lynen, he joined with his research on blood cholesterol with Sir John Cornforth, 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient. Born Konrad Emil Block, the second child of three children in a middle-class German Jewish family, he attended local schools in what is now Poland until 1930 when he went to Munich to study chemistry at the Technical University. He began to be inspired by the teachings of 1930 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient Hans Fischer and organic chemistry. He received a degree in chemical engineering in 1934 and with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish population, he left Germany, escaping to Switzerland in 1934 and immigrating to the United States in 1936. While in Switzerland, he researched tuberculous at Swiss Research Institute in Davos, publishing his first research paper. He continued his studies at Columbia University in New York City, earning his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1938. Beginning his academic career, he taught at Columbia University from 1939 to 1946. In 1942 he and another scientist recognized the initial discovery addressing the subject of fatty acids and cholesterol. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1944. In 1946, he began teaching at the University of Chicago, as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, with appointments to Associate Professor and Professor followed in 1948 and 1950, respectively. In 1953 he spent a successful year with a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institute of Organic Chemistry in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1954 he became a Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was during this time that his Nobel Prize findings were made. He held that post until 1982 when he retired from Harvard University. After retirement, he served as the Mack and Effie Campbell Tyner Eminent Scholar Chair in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the Medal of the Société de Chimie Biologique from France in 1958, Fritzsche Award from the American Chemical Society in 1964, Centennial Science Award from the University of Notre Dame in 1965, Cardano Medal from Italy's Lombardy Academy of Sciences in 1965, Distinguished Service Award from the University of Chicago School of Medicine in 1964, William Lloyd Evans Award from Ohio State University in 1968. He received honorary doctorate degrees from several universities around the world. He was a member of a host of learned societies and served on the executive board in many, and served as an editor of the "Journal of Biological Chemistry." In 1985 he became a Fellow in the Royal Society. Besides his Nobel Prize recognition discovery, he was recognized throughout his life-time for other important scientific discoveries. He received the National Medal of Science, which was presented by United States President Ronald Reagan at a White House Ceremony on July 15, 1988, "for his discovery of the principle of suicide inhibitors for enzymes and for an example of that principle. His discovery points the way to the rational design of therapeutic agents." He married a German lady in the United States in 1941 and had a son and a daughter. At the age of 98, he died from congested heart failure.