On July 14, 1896, Gerty Theresa Radnitz was born in Prague — later Gerty Cori, later the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, later the third woman in history to win a Nobel in any science.

Cori and her husband Carl had both been born in Prague, both trained in medicine there, and both emigrated to the United States after World War I. At every institution where they worked together, the university offered Carl a position and Gerty an unofficial appointment — researcher, assistant, associate — at a fraction of the salary or none at all.

At the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where they eventually settled, the dean told Gerty that her continuing to work alongside Carl was "un-American." She continued.

Together they discovered the Cori cycle — the metabolic pathway by which glycogen is broken down in muscle cells and converted to glucose in the liver, then returned to the muscles as energy. This mechanism is fundamental to understanding diabetes. In 1947, both Coris received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay.

The chair of the Nobel committee, in announcing the prize, described Carl's contributions in detail. He described Gerty's as "assistance."

She died of myelosclerosis in 1957.