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…

Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on June 8th, 1916, at Northampton, England, being the elder child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Wilkins. He has one brother, A. F. Crick, who is a doctor in New Zealand. Crick was educated at Northampton Grammar School and Mill Hill School, London. He studied physics at University…

I was born on July 19, 1921 in New York City and have always resided and worked there except for 3 1/2 years when I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois. Perhaps the earliest memories I have are of being a stubborn, determined child. Through the years my mother has told me…

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…

Ronald Ross was born on May 13, 1857, as the son of Sir C.C.G. Ross, a General in the English army. He commenced the study of medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London in 1875; entered the Indian Medical Service in 1881. He commenced the study of malaria in 1892. In 1894 he determined to…

George Hoyt Whipple was born on August 28, 1878, in Ashland, New Hampshire, U.S.A., the son of Dr. Ashley Cooper Whipple and his wife Frances Hoyt. His paternal grandfather and his father, both physicians, were born and bred in New Hampshire. Whipple was educated at Andover Academy and then went to Yale University, where he…

Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was born at Pongaroa, New Zealand, on December 15th, 1916. His parents came from Ireland; his father Edgar Henry Wilkins was a doctor in the School Medical Service and was very interested in research but had little opportunity for it. At the age of 6, Wilkins was brought to England and…

George Richards Minot was born on December 2, 1885, at Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. His ancestor, George Minot, had migrated to America in 1630, from Saffron Walden, England. His father, James Jackson Minot, was a physician, and his mother was Elizabeth Whitney. In his youth Minot was interested in butterflies and moths, and he published two…

John Carew Eccles was born in Melbourne, Australia, on January 27th, 1903. He owes much to his early training by his father, William James Eccles, who was a teacher as also was his mother, née Mary Carew. He graduated from Melbourne University in Medicine with first class honours in 1925, and as Victorian Rhodes Scholar…

I was born on 20 November 1886 in Vienna, the son of university professor Anton Ritter von Frisch and his wife Marie, née Exner. I studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine. After the first exams, I switched to the Faculty of Philosophy and studied…