Flashback

60 years ago
Alexander Fleming won the Nobel prize for medicine for the discovery of penicillin that saved the lives of many (including Winston Churchill) during the second world war. 

90 years ago
Henry Moseley, who devised the system of atomic numbers, was killed at the Gallipoli landings, during the first world war. 

100 years ago
Erwin Chargaff born in Austria. After emigrating to New York, he originated the rules controlling base pairing in DNA that led to Watson and Crick discovering DNA’s double-helix structure.   

105 years ago
Hans Adolf Krebs, who discovered the citric acid or Krebs cycle and made many other contributions to biochemistry, was born in Germany. He emigrated to England in 1933 on a Rockefeller fellowship to Cambridge University, and won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1953. 

110 years ago
Morris Kharasch, who brought free radicals into mainstream organic chemistry, was born in the Ukraine. He emigrated to Chicago in 1908 and did most of his research at its university. He founded the Journal of Organic Chemistry. 

120 years ago
George de Hevesy born in Budapest. After visiting Rutherford’s lab in Manchester, UK, he pioneered the use of radio isotopes in chemical and biochemical reactions, winning the Nobel prize in 1943. He also co-discovered element 72 - hafnium (Hf).