Konrad Emil Bloch, 88, a Harvard University professor emeritus of biochemistry, died of congestive heart failure on Oct. 15. He passed away at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass.

In 1964, Bloch received the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. He shared the award with Feodor Lynen, a biochemist from Munich. The men received the prize "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism," according to the transcript of the award presentation speech.

Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry Elias J. Corey said their discovery had a great effect on future drug development, and was used widely in medicine to control cholesterol levels and diseases of the circulatory system.

Corey, a colleague of Bloch's for 40 years, said he remembers him as "an example of a superlative scientist and extremely nice person."

He was "a great scientist, excellent teacher, splendid colleague, and a fine human being for which we will miss him all the more," he said.

Corey said Bloch's work was "interesting in the scientific view and had beneficial implications for human well-being."

Born in 1912 in Neisse, Germany to Jewish parents, Bloch had to flee because of religious and racial persecution. He graduated from Munich Technische Hochschule in 1934.

In 1938, two years after his arrival in the United States, he received his doctorate in biochemistry from Columbia University.