Cover to the 1957 booklet Energy Transformations in Living Matter by Hans Krebs, Hans Kornberg, and Keith Burton. [1]
In famous publications, Energy Transformations in Living Matter is an 85-page booklet on the thermodynamics or "energytransformations" of living matter by physician and biochemist Hans Krebs and biochemist Hans Kornberg, with an appendix by Keith Burton, notable for being the first major publication on the thermodynamics of biochemical reactions. [1]
The appendix by Burton, according to American biophysical chemist Robert Alberty, is the highlight of the booklet, which contains the first thermodynamic table for biochemical reactions, containing Gibbs free energy of formation ΔGfº values for about 100 species of biochemical reactions, able to make predictions on reactions that had not yet occurred. [2]
History The booklet is a reprint of pages 213 to 298 of the Results of Physiology, Organic Chemistry, and Experimental Pharmacology (Ergebnisse Der Physiologie, Biologischen Chemie Und Experimentellen Pharmakologie) published by Neundundvierzigster Band in 1957.
References 1. Krebs, H.A. and Kornberg, H.L. (1957). Energy Transformations in Living Matter - a Survey (with Appendix by K. Burton) (abstract).Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 2. Alberty, Robert, A. (2003). Thermodynamic of Biochemical Reactions (1.1.: Brief History of the Thermodynamics of Biochemical Reactions, pg. 2). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
