Emil von Behring

Emil Adolf Behring was born 15 March 1854, a German physiologist who spent his career chasing invisible killers. His work on serum therapy - using blood components to neutralize toxins - broke open a new approach to medicine, particularly against diphtheria and tetanus. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for that work, the committee citing how he had "placed in the hands of the physician a victorious weapon against illness and deaths". The same year Prussia granted him nobility; Emil Adolf Behring became Emil von Behring. For a generation he was called "saviour of children" - diphtheria had been a leading child-killer, and his antitoxin changed that. He died 31 March 1917, seventeen years after the prize that made serum therapy orthodoxy.