I was born on December 1, 1925 in Baltimore, Maryland where I attended public schools and graduated from the accelerated course at Baltimore City College, a public high school of special note because it took selected students from around the city. An all boys school, it resembled a private college preparatory school in both its…

My childhood was spent on the outskirts of the sub-tropical city of Brisbane. I have a younger brother, Ian, and we grew up as part of a traditional, extended family that was very much influenced by the values of our two grandmothers. The one was a devout Methodist, the other a lapsed Quaker who was…

Henry Hallett Dale was born in London on June 9, 1875. He attended Leys School, Cambridge, and in 1894 he entered Trinity College with a scholarship. He graduated through the Natural Sciences Tripos, specializing in physiology and zoology. From 1898 to 1900 he was a Coutts-Trotter Student in Physiology at Trinity College, working then under…

Bernard Katz was born on March 26th, 1911, in Leipzig, Germany, of Russian Jewish origin, only son of Max Katz and Eugenie Rabinowitz. His school education was at the Albert Gymnasium in Leipzig (1921-1929). He studied Medicine at the University of Leipzig, 1929-1934; received the Siegfried Garten Prize for physiological research in 1933 and obtained…

I was born in 1944 in Riehen, a village near Basel, and spent almost all of my first twenty-five years with my family in the same house. My grandfather on my father’s side had bought this house in 1918 after moving with his family from Tübingen to Basel to become Professor of German Literature at…

Walter Rudolf Hess was born in Frauenfeld, East Switzerland, on March 17, 1881. His father was a teacher of physics who allowed him, at a very early age, great freedom in dealing with apparatus, and taught him a proper carefulness. He also obtained a self-reliant gift of observation during excursions through forests and meadows, and…

Ulf S. von Euler was born in Stockholm on February 7th, 1905, as the second son of and Astrid Cleve. His father was born in Augsburg, Germany, as the only son of general Rigas von Euler-Chelpin. Hans von Euler-Chelpin received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1929. Ulf’s mother was the daughter of Per Teodor…

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran was born in Paris on June 18, 1845 in the house which was formerly No. 19 rue de l’Est but later became, when this district was rebuilt, an hotel at No. 125, Boulevard St. Michel. Both his father and paternal grandfather were medical men. His father, Dr. Louis Théodore Laveran, was…

(António Caetano de Abreu Freire) Egas Moniz was born in Avanca, Portugal, on November 29, 1874, the son of Fernando de Pina Rezende Abreu and Maria do Rosário de Almeida e Sousa. He received his early education from his uncle Abbé Caetano de Pina Rezende Abreu Sa Freire, before joining the Faculty of Medicine at…

Julius Axelrod was born on May 30th, 1912, in New York City. He obtained his B. Sc. in 1933 at the College of the City of New York, M. A. in 1941 at New York University, and Ph. D. in 1955 from the George Washington University. From 1933 to 1935 he was Laboratory Assistant at…