Paul Hermann Müller

Paul Hermann Müller was a Swiss chemist working in obscurity when, in 1939, he identified the insecticidal properties of DDT. The compound proved devastatingly effective against the mosquitoes that spread malaria and yellow fever, diseases that had shaped the fates of empires and continents. By 1948 the Nobel committee awarded him the prize in Physiology or Medicine - rare recognition for a chemist, rarer still for a discovery whose consequences would turn so thoroughly bitter. Müller died in 1965, three years into the gathering storm that would make his breakthrough synonymous with ecological catastrophe.