He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in 1989 together with Alfred Gilman and, together with his collaborator Edmond H. Fischer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes.

[1] The School of Medicine afforded Krebs the opportunity to train as a physician as well as to gain experience in medical research.

Krebs was discharged from the Navy in 1946 and was unable to immediately return to hospital work; he was advised to study basic science instead.

He chose to study biochemistry and was postdoctoral fellow to Carl and Gerty Cori, working on the interaction of protamine with rabbit muscle phosphorylase.

This cycle controls numerous metabolic processes, and plays a central role in the regulation of cell division, shape, and motility.