[Danish contributions to early cell biology: with a point of departure in films, among others about the inauguration of the biological institute of the Carlsberg Foundation October 19, 1932].

Louis Pasteur in France saw that microbes might cause disease, Gerhard Armauer Hansen in Norway established a connection between a bacterium and a human disease, and Robert Koch in Germany supplied the final proof that linked bacteria to disease. From then on there was an explosion in interest and techniques for cultivation of bacteria. It lasted about 30 years before Harrison in the USA succeeded in growing cells from multicellular organisms in pure culture. His technique came to Denmark at an early time point and the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and the Carlsberg Foundation in Copenhagen joined forces and built the Biological Institute of the Carlsberg Foundation in order to support Albert Fischer in his study of cell biology. His first assistant at this Institute, Fritz Lipmann, won the Nobel Prize for 1953 for work initiated there. The Institute remained a center for cell biology for almost 50 years. At the neighboring Rockefeller Institute in Copenhagen Einar Lundsgaard obtained results showing in the short perspective that current concepts of cellular utilization of energy were wrong, and in the long perspective his assistant, Herman Kalckar, would formulate modern concepts of cellular oxidative phosphorylations. This review is based in part on films from the 1930's.