The word Glycolysis is formed from the Greek words Glykos meaning sugar and lysis meaning splitting. The biochemical process in which one molecule of glucose is broken down step by step into two molecules of pyruvic acid by the action of different types of enzymes is called glycolysis. In 1918, German scientists Gustave George Embden, Otto Meyerhof and Jakob Karol Parnas discovered the reactions of glycolysis. As their name suggests, glycolysis is abbreviated as the EMP pathway. Since the reactions of glycolysis take place in the cytoplasm of the cell, it is called cytoplasmic respiration.