Domagk

In 1932, a German pathologist and bacteriologist, Gerhard Domagk, discovered that a chemical called prontosil protected against bacterial infections in mice.

Domagk’s 6-year-old daughter would probably have died of a strep infection had she not been treated with sulfa, one of the first in a parade of unprecedented medical resurrections.

Less well known is Gerhard Domagk, the German chemist whose dogged benchwork in the 1930s created the first sulfa drugs.

In the 1930s, the microbiologist Gerhard Domagk found that prontosil could tackle infection by the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes in mice2.

In 1932, German biochemist Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk discovered that the compound sulfanilamide could vanquish deadly strains of bacteria, like the streptococcus in his lab mice and in his first human test subject, his gravely ill young daughter.