Born in Ghent, Belgium on March 28, 1892, Corneille Jean François Heymans was the eldest of six sons of Jan-Frans Heymans, a noted pharmacologist who founded the J. F. Heymans Institute of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Ghent. He and his father were to become a scientific team of considerable reputation--one of the few father-son scientific teams in history.

Heymans' career was delayed by four years of service as a field artillery officer in the Belgian Army during World War I. His performance won him the Belgian War Cross and the Order of the Crown of Leopold, among other decorations for valor.

After the war, Heymans received his medical degree from the University of Ghent in 1920. His father was his principal teacher and later would become his primary co-researcher in the experiments that ultimately led to the Nobel Prize in 1938. Had his father not died in...