Gerhard Domagk, since 1924 Professor for Pathology at the University of Muenster/Westfalia and since 1928 also Head of the Institute for Experimental Pathology of the Bayer AG at Wuppertal-Elberfeld, discovered in 1934 the healing effect of sulfonamides, the precedent of antibiotics. For this discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1939. In 1943 he detected the first remedy against tuberculosis, a worid-wide epidemic at that time.
"It is easier to destroy thousands of lives than to save one." Words by Gerhard Domagk which he wrote down shortly after the outbreak of World War II when he was kept prisoner because of the Nobel Prize. He saved thousands of people. He died in 1964, aged 69.