George Wells Beadle was born at Wahoo, Nebraska, U.S.A., October 22, 1903, the son of Chauncey Elmer Beadle, a farmer, and his wife Hattie Albro. George was educated at the Wahoo High School and might himself have become a farmer if one of his teachers at school had not directed his mind towards science and…

François Jacob was born in June 1920 in Nancy (France). He was the only son of Simon Jacob and Thérèse Franck. After attending the Lycée Carnot in Paris, he began studying medicine at the Faculty of Paris, with the intention of becoming a surgeon. These studies were interrupted by the war. In June 1940, when…

Julius Wagner – his father Adolf Johann Wagner was granted the title “Ritter von Jauregg” only in 1883 – was born on March 7, 1857, in Wels, Austria. He attended the famous old Schottengymnasium in Vienna and started reading medicine at Vienna University in 1874. From 1874 to 1880 he studied with Salomon Stricker, in…

Edward Lawrie Tatum was born on December 14th, 1909, at Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. He was the eldest son of Arthur Lawrie Tatum, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, and Mabel Webb Tatum. After the death of his mother, his father married the former Celia Harriman. Tatum was educated at the University…

André Michel Lwoff was born on 8 May 1902 in Ainay-le-Château (Allier). He joined the Institut Pasteur at the age of 19. He had graduated in science and had done one year of medicine. Lwoff completed his studies while working in the laboratory. In 1921, he had the good fortune to study under a very…

Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk was born on October 30, 1895, at Lagow, a beautiful, small town in the Brandenburg Marches. Until he was fourteen he went to school in Sommerfeld, where his father was assistant headmaster. His mother, Martha Reimer, came from farming stock in the Marches, where she lived in Sommerfeld until 1945 when…

Joshua Lederberg was born in Montclair, N.J. on May 23, 1925. He was brought up in the Washington Heights District of Upper Manhattan, New York City, where he received his education in Public School 46, Junior High School 164 and Stuyvesant High School. From 1941 to 1944 he studied at Columbia College, where he obtained…

Jacques Lucien Monod was born in Paris on February 9th, 1910. In 1917 his parents settled in the South of France, where Monod spent his early years, and he therefore thinks of himself as a Southerner rather than as a Parisian. His father was a painter, something of an unusual vocation for a Huguenot family…

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet was born at Traralgon, Victoria, Australia, on September 3rd, 1899. He is the son of the Manager of the branch of the Colonial Bank in that town. He was educated at the Victoria State Schools and at Geelong College, completing his medical course at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated…

Memories of my early childhood are clouded with uncertainties because I was essentially separated from my parents since the early age of seven. I was born in Shanghai, China on April 6, 1920. My father had come there from Vienna, Austria after earning doctorates in law and business. My mother, born Renée Tapernoux, had arrived…