He served as an officer in the elite Uhlan (cavalry regiment) during the First World War, and was awarded the Iron Cross (1st Class) for bravery.

Emil was also president of the Physikalische Reichsanstalt, Wirklicher Geheimer Oberregierungsrat (True Senior Privy Counselor).

In later years, he would return for visits, and maintained a lifelong friendship with the family of the station's director, Anton Dohrn.

A lifelong equestrian, he served as an officer in the elite Uhlans (cavalry) on the front during the First World War, where he won the Iron Cross.

[3] The Nobel laureate George Wald, having completed his Ph.D. in zoology at Columbia University, received an award from the U.S. National Research Council to study with Warburg.

[7] In 1941, Warburg briefly lost his post for making remarks critical of the Nazi regime, but in a few weeks was able to resume his research following a personal order from Hitler's Chancellery.

[7] In September 1942, Warburg made an official request for equal status ("Gleichstellung") with German Aryans, which was granted.

[9][12][13] The decisive factor was Warburg's distinguished military service in the Great War, as Jewish veterans were often exempted from the loss of citizenship mandated by the Nuremberg laws.

Warburg's Germanic physiognomy may also have weighed in his favor, as Hitler's Chancellery is known to have factored in eye color and face shape when evaluating Aryanization applications.

[9] Others have suggested that Warburg was so totally devoted to his work that he was prepared not only to stay in Germany but to tolerate the treatment of his Jewish colleagues and relatives by the Nazis.

"[16] In 1943 Warburg relocated his laboratory to the village of Liebenburg on the outskirts of Berlin to avoid ongoing air raids.

[17] Three scientists who worked in Warburg's lab, including Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, went on to win the Nobel Prize in future years.

Warburg's combined work in plant physiology, cell metabolism, and oncology made him an integral figure in the later development of systems biology.

Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.Warburg continued to develop the hypothesis experimentally and gave several prominent lectures outlining the theory and the data.

An unabashed anglophile, Otto Warburg was thrilled when Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate.

[citation needed] He was awarded the Order Pour le Mérite in 1952 and was known to tell other universities not to bother with honorary doctorates.

[citation needed] When frustrated by the lack of acceptance of his ideas, Warburg was known to quote an aphorism he attributed to Max Planck: "Science advances one funeral at a time".

It has been awarded by the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie) since 1963.