Felix Haurowitz Suggests that Hemoglobin is a Molecular Lung

In 1938, while working at the Charles University in Prague, Czech-American biochemist Felix Haurowitz discovered that crystalline deoxyhemoglobin changes in shape and color on reaction with oxygen, suggesting that it is a molecular lung. Haurowitz, “Das Gleichgewicht zwischen Hämoglobin and Sauerstoff,” Hoppe-Seyl. Z. Physiol. Chem. 254 (1938) 266-72.

To escape the holocaust, in April 1939 Haurowitz and his family emigrated to Turkey, where Haurowitz became Professor and Director of the Institute for Biological and Medical Chemistry in Istanbul. After World War II Haurowitz emigrated to the United States and became professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. There in 1949 James D. Watson took Haurowitz’s course on proteins and nucleic acids.

Max Perutz, Science is Not a Quiet Life, xviii. (Haurowitz was married to one of Perutz's cousins.)