ABSTRACT
In the early morning hours of October 26, 1939, Gerhard Domagk was roused from slumber by the incessant ringing of the telephone . Picking up the phone, he heard the caller in a Swedishaccented voice say: “You have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of Prontosil .” Domagk was stunned and elated . However, his euphoria was soon tempered by the fact that Fuhrer Adolph Hitler had forbidden any German to accept a Nobel Prize or deliver the lecture in Stockholm, Sweden . Domagk was forced to sign a letter addressed to the appropriate Nobel committee that stated: It was against his nation’s law to accept, and the award also represented an attempt to provoke and disobey his Fuhrer . At the end of World War II, Domagk was reinvited to travel to Stockholm to accept on behalf of the Karolinska Institute and the King the Nobel Prize consisting of a gold medal and diploma and to deliver his speech . The money, 140,000 Swedish crowns-a rich award worth several years of salary for most scientists-he would never see, since in accordance with the rules of the Nobel Foundation unclaimed prize money reverts back to the main prize fund . In the introductory speech, delivered by Professor N . Svartz of the Karolinska Institute, in 1947, she said: “During the past 15 to 20 years a great deal of work has been carried out by various drug manufacturers with a view to producing less toxic but at the same time therapeutically effective … preparations . Professor Gerhard Domagk … planned and directed the investigations involving experimental animals . The discovery of Prontosil opened up undreamed of prospects for the treatment of infectious diseases . What Paul Ehrlich dreamed of, and also made a reality using Salvarsan in an exceptional case has now, through your work become a widely recognized fact . We can now justifiably believe that in the future infectious diseases will be eradicated by means of chemical compounds .”
