Albrecht Kossel was one of the earliest scientists to apply the exact methods of organic chemistry to problems in the chemistry of living tissue. His investigations into the cell substance nuclein revealed that it contained both protein and nonprotein (nucleic acid) parts. His research into protein components led to the discovery of the amino acid histidine. For his work on cell chemistry and proteins, Kossel won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1910.

Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel was born on September 16, 1853, in Rostock, Germany. He was the eldest son of a merchant father, also named Albrecht Kossel, and Clara Jeppe Kossel. Botany was Kossel's first love, but his father saw no future in that, so in 1872 Kossel entered the University of Strasbourg to study medicine instead. While there, he came under the influence of Ernst Felix Immanuel Hoppe-Seyler, one of the forefathers of the then-emerging field...