He, together with his wife Gerty Cori and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, received a Nobel Prize in 1947 for their discovery of how the glucose derivative glycogen (animal starch) is broken down and resynthesized in the body for use as a store and source of energy.

[11][12] The Cori family came from the Papal State (later the Roman Republic, today's Central Italy) to the royal Bohemian crownland, (Monarchical Austria at the end of the 17th century).

Carl Ferdinand's grandfather Eduard Cori (1812–1889)[13] was an administrative officer and beekeeper in Brüx, and his grandmother was Rosina Trinks (?–1909).

He was appointed visiting professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard University while maintaining a laboratory space at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he pursued research in genetics.

From 1968 to 1983, he collaborated with noted geneticist Salomé Glüecksohn-Waelsch of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, until the 1980s when illness prevented him from continuing.

[18] In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Cori won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1946 and in 1959, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.