Short answers, pulled from the story.
Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. It is a sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology and may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, and metabolism.
Vinzenz Kletzinsky first used the term when his Compendium der Biochemie was printed in Vienna in 1858. The German chemist Carl Neuberg is often cited as having coined the word in 1903, while some credit it to Franz Hofmeister.
In 1828, Friedrich Wohler published a paper on his serendipitous synthesis of urea from potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate. Some regarded it as a direct overthrow of vitalism and the establishment of organic chemistry, though the claim that it ended vitalism remains controversial.
The four main classes of biomolecules are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. They provide the structure of cells and perform many of the functions associated with life.
Enzymes lower the activation energy of a reaction and can speed it up by a rate of 10 to the 11th power or more. A reaction that would normally take over 3,000 years to complete on its own might take less than a second with an enzyme.
Complete oxidation of one glucose molecule conserves a total of 32 molecules of ATP. This comes from two in glycolysis, two in the citric acid cycle, and 28 more generated through the respiratory chain.