Nobel Prize

Robert Koch was born on December 11, 1843, at Clausthal in the Upper Harz Mountains. The son of a mining engineer, he astounded his parents at the age of five by telling them that he had, with the aid of the newspapers, taught himself to read, a feat which foreshadowed the intelligence and methodical persistence…

Paul Ehrlich was born on March 14, 1854 at Strehlen, in Upper Silesia, Germany. He was the son of Ismar Ehrlich and his wife Rosa Weigert, whose nephew was the great bacteriologist Karl Weigert. Ehrlich was educated at the Gymnasium at Breslau and subsequently at the Universities of Breslau, Strassburg, Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Leipzig. In 1878…

Charles Richet was born on August 26, 1850, in Paris. He was the son of Alfred Richet, Professor of Clinical Surgery in the Faculty of Medicine, Paris, and his wife Eugenie, née Renouard. He studied in Paris, becoming Doctor of Medicine in 1869, Doctor of Sciences in 1878 and Professor of Physiology from 1887 onwards…

Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger was born at Silkeborg (Denmark) on April 23, 1867. His father, C. E. A. Fibiger, was a local medical practitioner and his mother, Elfride Muller, was a writer. Fibiger gained his bachelor’s degree in 1883 and qualified as a doctor in 1890. After a period of working in hospitals and studying…

Christiaan Eijkman was born on August 11, 1858, at Nijkerk in Gelderland (The Netherlands), the seventh child of Christiaan Eijkman, the headmaster of a local school, and Johanna Alida Pool. A year later, in 1859, the Eijkman family moved to Zaandam, where his father was appointed head of a newly founded school for advanced elementary…

Frederick Gowland Hopkins was born on June 20, 1861, at Eastbourne, England. His father, a bookseller in Bishopsgate Street, London, was much interested in science, but he died when Gowland was an infant. For the next ten years Gowland lived with his mother at Eastbourne, showing as a child literary rather than scientific tastes, although,…

Otto Heinrich Warburg was born on October 8, 1883, in Freiburg, Baden. His father, the physicist Emil Warburg, was President of the Physikalische Reichsanstalt, Wirklicher Geheimer Oberregierungsrat. Otto studied chemistry under the great , and gained the degree, Doctor of Chemistry (Berlin), in 1906. He then studied under von Krehl and obtained the degree, Doctor…

Charles Scott Sherrington was born on November 27, 1857, at Islington, London. He was the son of James Norton Sherrington, of Caister, Great Yarmouth, who died when Sherrington was a young child. Sherrington’s mother later married Dr. Caleb Rose of Ipswich, a good classical scholar and a noted archaeologist, whose interest in the English artists…

Edgar Douglas Adrian was born on November 30, 1889, in London. He was the second son of Alfred Douglas Adrian, C.B., K.C., legal adviser to the British Local Government Board. Adrian went to school at Westminster School, London, and in 1908 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, at which College he had won a Scholarship…

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born on September 25, 1866, at Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A. He was the eldest son of Charlton Hunt Morgan. He was educated at the University of Kentucky, where he took his B.S. degree in 1886, subsequently doing postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied morphology with W. K. Brooks, and…