Otto Heinrich Warburg was a German physiologist and physician. He was born into a renowned Jewish family but his father had converted to Christianity before his birth and his mother was a born protestant. Accordingly, he was declared a Mischling during the Nazi regime and allowed to carry on his research even when Jews were being systematically murdered by the state machinery. However, many were of the opinion that he was allowed to live because he was involved in cancer research. At the same time, he was so devoted to his work that he refused to leave Germany even though he was offered a chance to do so. That was mainly because relocating would have resulted in losing a lot of research potential. He hypothesized that a tumor cell turns cancerous when it starts generating energy by non-oxidative breakdown of glucose; contrarily, healthy cells generate energy from oxidative breakdown of pyruvate. However, he failed to reveal how cancer cells undergo unchecked growth. For his work on cancer cells he was twice nominated for Nobel Prize but received it only once.
