Vladimir Prelog was born in 1906, to Milan and Mara (Cettolo) Prelog in Sarajevo, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Prelog's early life in general was surrounded by the political upheaval and war endemic to that part of the world. In 1924, he moved to Prague to study chemistry at the Czech Institute of Technology and earned his doctorate there in 1929.

In the severely depressed economy of the time, and particularly since he was not a citizen of Czechoslovakia, it was impossible to obtain a job with any research organization. Thus, from 1929 to 1934, Prelog worked unofficially with an entrepreneur who set up a home laboratory to supply specialty chemicals to business, government, and the military. He accepted a low paying teaching position at the University of Zagreb in 1935, and to make ends meet took a second job with a local pharmaceutical company. The company and university connections proved fruitful...