Yet their backgrounds were very dissimilar. Carl came from a Catholic family which had a history of university professors on both sides. As he wrote in his autobiographical article "The Call of Science:" "It would have been unusual for me to go in a different direction. Rejection of the values of one's parents was not as prevalent then as it is today, and family tradition was still a strong influence."¹ When Carl was two years old, his family moved to Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where his father was named director of the Marine Biological Station. Carl's father had studied medicine, but later earned a Ph.D. in zoology.

Cori later wrote that "Trieste was a fascinating city in which to grow up. The early contact in school with different language groups developed in me an immunity against racial propaganda."² Carl was educated at the classical gymnasium, whose syllabus still included rigorous training in Latin and Greek. Equally important in his education was experience at his father's research institute. Carl often accompanied his father on field trips on a motor boat to collect marine samples. The elder Cori captained the boat and lectured on geology, botany, and the history of the region, with side trips to visit Roman ruins. Summers were spent in the Tyrolean Alps with his extended family where the young Carl Cori developed a lifelong love of mountaineering.

Less is known about the background of Gerty Radnitz. She was Jewish. Her father was a chemist who devised a method for refining sugar and became a successful manager of sugar refineries. Her mother, a cultured woman, was a friend of Kafka. The oldest of three sisters, Gerty was educated at home until ten, when she was sent to a private school.

Carl Cori and Gerty Radnitz first met in 1914 - at the beginning of World War I - when they entered Carl Ferdinand University in Prague to study medicine. Carl described Gerty as "a young woman who had charm, vitality, intelligence, a sense of humor, and love of the outdoors - qualities which immediately attracted me. A very pleasant period followed during which we would plan and study together, or go off on excursions to the countryside, or on a skiing expedition."³ The medical students studied inorganic and organic chemistry, physics, and biology in the first year, adding biochemistry, physiology, and pharmacology in the second year.

This seemingly idyllic student environment ended abruptly when Carl was drafted into the Austrian army in 1916. Like for so many young men who served in that conflict, the war had a profound affect on Carl's view of human behavior. In addition, his experiences in the war and its immediate aftermath left him gloomy about the ability of doctors to control disease. In 1918 Carl was assigned to a barracks that served as a hospital for infectious diseases near the front lines on the Piave River in Italy. Disease was rampant, and "the influenza epidemic with its high mortality rate among the poorly nourished soldiers and civilians and the inability to be of any help came as a great shock to me."⁴

After the war, Carl and Gerty were reunited. In 1920 they received their medical degrees and published their first joint research paper. That same year the young couple was married in Vienna, where they were pursuing postdoctoral studies. Carl split his time between the Internal Medicine Clinic and the Pharmacology Institute, both at the University of Vienna. He was able to conduct research, a rarity due to the economic deprivation of post-War Europe, because his father sent him a shipment of frogs. He used the animals to study the mechanism of the seasonal variation of the vagus action of the heart. Gerty Cori worked in pediatrics at the Karolinen Kinderspital, where she conducted research on temperature regulation before and following thyroid treatment and published several papers on blood disorders.

Carl Cori wrote many years later that "life in Vienna had its compensations," but in fact it also had its deprivations, and Gerty developed symptoms of xerophtalmia, a condition caused by vitamin A deficiency and which was cured only when she returned to Prague, where she ate a better diet. Because of the difficulty of life in Europe and because Gerty was Jewish and a woman, which made finding an academic position difficult, the Coris decided to investigate immigrating to the United States. In 1921 Carl interviewed for a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease (now Roswell Park Memorial Institute) in Buffalo, New York. But when he heard nothing further, he accepted a position instead with Otto Loewi in the Pharmacology Department at the University of Graz. Gerty remained in Vienna at the Children's Hospital.

Carl Cori found working with Loewi, who discovered that acetylcholine was the substance that led to vagus stimulation of the heart, intellectually rewarding. It was also a period in his life when he planned for the future. It was while he was at Graz that Cori decided to study intestinal absorption and the metabolism of sugar in animals. Family tradition holds that Gerty's interest in sugar metabolism stemmed from her father, who when be became diabetic, said to his daughter, who was a doctor, "Find me a cure."⁵

But despite the joy of working with Loewi, Carl found the atmosphere at Graz disturbing. The living conditions were poor, and it had been necessary for him to prove his Aryan descent to obtain employment at the university. So determined were the Coris to leave Europe that they applied to the Dutch government to serve as doctors in Java. But the offer eventually came from Buffalo, and the Coris eagerly accepted.

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