For decades, antibodies--substances manufactured by plasma cells to help fight disease--were produced artificially by injecting animals with foreign macromolecules, then extracted by bleeding the animals and separating the antiserum in their blood. The technique was arduous and far from foolproof. But the discovery of the hybridoma technique by German immunologist Georges Köhler changed revolutionize the procedure. Köhler's work made antibodies relatively easy to produce and dramatically facilitated research on many serious medical disorders, such as the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and cancer. For his work on what would come to be known as monoclonal antibodies, Köhler shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Born in Munich, in what was then occupied Germany, on 17 April 1946, Georges Jean Franz Köhler attended the University of Freiburg, where he obtained his Ph.D. in biology in 1974. From there he set off to Cambridge University in...