Nobel Laureate Scientist. He received professional recognition, as a Danish scientist, as one of the three scientists, who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997. Besides him, this coveted award was given to American scientist Paul D. Boyer and British scientist John E. Walker, with each receiving a fourth of the Nobel monetary prize and Skou receiving the majority of half. According to the Nobel Prize committee, Skou received the Nobel Prize "for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase." Born into a wealthy family, he was afforded an excellent education. He was age 12 when his father died. During World War II, Nazi Forces had occupied Denmark by April of 1940, restricting many freedoms but not the study of medicine. Though many of his professors were hiding underground from the Nazis, he earned his medical degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1944 with a secret graduating ceremony. He administered medical services as needed but played a part in the war by retrieving weapons that were dropped by English pilots for the underground Danish forces. While doing this, he was captured by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp in the southern part of Denmark and was released on May 5, 1945. Working as a surgeon, he became interested in the mechanism of action of anesthetics and joined Aarhus University in 1947 to conduct research as a graduate student. He later earned his doctorate degree in 1954 from Aarhus University and became a professor of biophysics at the university. In the 1950s, his work in anesthetics led him to the discovery of the sodium-potassium pump, an enzyme that moves ions across the cell membrane. In 1963, he became chairman of the Institute of Physiology at Aarhus. He continued his work on membrane physiology and the details of the pump throughout his career. He traveled around the world, lecturing at colleges. He retired from Aarhus University in 1988, but kept his office at the Institute of Physiology. In 1997, he shared the Nobel Prize with Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker, who also did research on the sodium-potassium pump. He married a nurse in 1948, and the couple had three daughters but the oldest died young. After their daughters were adults, his wife became political, serving on various health related committees including the Danish Central Scientific Ethical Committee for seventeen years.