The son of a successful businessman, Emil Fischer, at the urging of his father, reluctantly joined the family firm when he left high school. But the young man yearned to be a mathematician or physicist and, after a few years, his father gave in and allowed him to attend the University of Bonn. A year later, in 1872, Fischer transferred to Strasbourg to study with the well-known chemist, Adolf von Baeyer, and decided to make organic chemistry his career.

After earning his doctorate in 1874 Fischer followed Baeyer to Munich, Germany to continue his studies which, at that time, centered around the organic derivatives of hydrazine (a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen). Many of his hydrazine derivatives later proved highly useful to Germany's dye industry, then in its infancy. More importantly, Fischer discovered that his compounds--phenylhydrazine, in particular--reacted chemically with carbohydrates in such a way that they could be used...