My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur. After the 1930s recession they moved to Wembley, North-West London, where my father worked as a mechanic in the local H.J.…

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…

Andrew Fielding Huxley was born in Hampstead, London, on 22nd November 1917. His father, Leonard Huxley, who was a son of the nineteenth – century scientist and writer Thomas Huxley, was for a time a classics master at Charterhouse School and later took up a literary career, writing a number of biographies and being editor…

For biographical information on Robert G. Edwards, see the lecture ‘Robert Edwards: Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine’. Pdf 455 kB Robert G. Edwards died on 10 April 2013.

I was born in The Hague, Netherlands, on 15th April 1907, the third of five children of Dirk C. Tinbergen and Jeannette van Eek. We were a happy and harmonious family. My mother was a warm, impulsive person; my father – a grammar school master in Dutch language and history – was devoted to his…

Konrad E. Bloch was born on 21st January 1912, in Neisse, Upper Silesia, then Germany, the son of Fritz Bloch and his wife Hedwig, née Striemer. He attended the elementary school and the Real gymnasium in the same city and in 1930 went to Munich to study chemistry at the Technische Hochschule. He became soon…

Feodor Lynen was born in Munich on 6 April 1911, the son of Wilhelm Lynen, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Munich Technische Hochschule. His mother, Frieda, was the daughter of the manufacturer Gustav Prym. Lynen completed his primary and secondary schooling in Munich, and in 1930 matriculated at the chemistry department of Munich University.…

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…

Birthplace and Family: Born August 20, 1913, in Hartford, Connecticut to Francis Bushnell and Florence Kraemer Sperry of Elmwood, a small suburb. Father was in banking; mother trained in business school and after dad’s death, when I was 11 years old, she became assistant to the principal in the local high school. One brother, Russell…

Corneille Jean François Heymans was born in Ghent, Belgium, on March 28, 1892. His father was J. F. Heymans, formerly Professor of Pharmacology and Rector of the University of Ghent, who founded the J. F. Heymans Institute of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the same University. Corneille received his secondary education at the St. Lievenscollege (Ghent),…