Nazi refugee’s nobel prize medal to be sold to help modern refugees

A Nobel Prize medal given to a pioneering scientist who came to the UK having fled Nazi Germany will be sold at auction with the proceeds going to a charity helping modern-day refugee scientists.

Hans Krebs, who died in 1981, won the prize for medicine in 1953 for his work on how food is converted into energy.

As a Jew, he had been forced to flee his native Germany in the 1930s after the introduction of anti-Semitic laws and worked at Cambridge and Sheffield Universities.

His son, the zoologist Lord Krebs said: “I am donating my father’s Nobel Prize Medal in order to establish a Charitable Trust in his name.

“My father was helped by the Academic Assistance Council when he came to Britain as a refugee scientist, so the Sir Hans Krebs Trust will provide support for today’s refugee biomedical scientists.

“The Trust will also support the training of doctoral students in the biomedical sciences: my father was a passionate believer in the importance of training the next generation.

“I believe that he would have thoroughly approved of the creation of the Trust by the sale of his medal.”

The medal is expected to sell for around £350,000 when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on July 14.