Gerhard Domagk, 1895-1964

Abstract

Gerhard Domagk, who died on 24 April 1964, became a notable figure in the world of medical science by his reporting (1935) an experiment which made a landmark in the control of bacterial infections. He showed that mice, which usually died within a day or two of an intraperitoneal injection of a culture of streptococci, could survive in good health if they were given a single dose of a synthetic red dye within 1 1/2 hours of the injection. That at once raised the question, would the same drug be effective against the common infections of human beings by similar streptococci ? Little is known about Domagk’s early life except that he was born in the Province of Brandenburg in 1895, and in due course became a student at Kiel University shortly before the First World War. Being wounded in 1915 he was transferred from his grenadier regiment to the Medical Corps. After the war he returned to Kiel to study medicine, and graduated in 1921. After serving for short periods as an assistant to Professor Hoppe Seyler, and, later, in pathology at the University of Greifswald, he joined the staff of the I. G. Farbenindustrie at Wuppertal-Elberfeld. In 1927, at the early age of 32, he was appointed director of research in experimental pathology and bacteriology, and continued in that post for the rest of his active life—37 years.