Adolf Windaus devoted his professional life to the investigation of the chemistry of natural products. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1928 for his work on sterols, which led to his clarifying the chemical structure of cholesterol, and he is also noted for his discoveries of the structure of vitamin D, some of the B vitamins, and histamine. The impact of his work made it possible for many other scientists to study the structures of other natural products; for example, his work on cholesterol helped to establish the study of sex hormones. Windaus's research on digitalis was used in the treatment of heart disease, and his studies of vitamin D led to the development of irradiation, a process of exposing foods, such as milk and bread, to ultraviolet light in order to prevent nutritional deficiencies that could lead to disease.

Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus came from...