Flashback

Birth of Elmer Verner McCollum, the US biochemist credited as the greatest single contributor to the improvement of nutritional human health. McCollum was the first to use rats in nutritional experimentation and developed the letter system of naming vitamins. He discovered vitamin A in 1913, co-discovered vitamin D in 1921 and established a link between nutrition and disease.

Birth of Otto Hahn in Frankfurt. Hahn’s most notable discovery was the fission of uranium and thorium in medium heavy atomic nuclei. His work on the fission of heavy nuclei led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944. However, Hahn could not attend the ceremony as, at the time, he was being held by the British over Germany’s failed effort to develop an atomic bomb.