German–Swedish biochemist (1873–1964)
Euler-Chelpin was born at Augsburg in Germany and educated at the universities of Berlin, Strasbourg, and Göttingen and at the Pasteur Institute. In 1898 he moved to Sweden being appointed to the staff of the University of Stockholm, where in 1906 he became professor of general and inorganic chemistry. In 1929 he also became director of the Institute of Biochemistry where he remained until his retirement in 1941. Although he became a Swedish citizen in 1902 he served Germany in both world wars.
In 1904 important work by Arthur Harden had shown that enzymes contain an easily removable nonprotein part, a coenzyme. In 1923 Euler-Chelpin worked out the structure of the yeast coenzyme. He showed that the molecule is made up from a nucleotide similar to that found in nucleic acid. It was named diphosphopyridine nucleotide (now known as NAD).
Euler-Chelpin shared the 1929 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Harden for this work. His son, Ulf von Euler, was also a Nobel prizewinner.
