The German bacteriologist and experimental pathologist Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk (1895-1964) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil.

Gerhard Domagk was born at Lagow, Brandenburg, on Oct. 30, 1895. He began the study of medicine at the University of Kiel in 1913. After World War I, throughout which he served in the army, he graduated in medicine at Kiel in 1921. In 1924-1925 he was a lecturer in pathology in the universities of Greifswald and Münster. He became director of research in experimental pathology and bacteriology on the staff of the I.G. Farbenindustrie at Wuppertal-Elberfeld in 1927.

Beginnings of Chemotherapy

Early in the 1900s a synthetic organic arsenic compound was used to treat experimental trypanosomiasis. Paul Ehrlich confirmed this and then began to search for a similar compound for the treatment of syphilis. Successive organic compounds were synthesized and...