Born in Munich, in what was then occupied Germany, on April 17, 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 England, to work as a postdoctoral fellow for two years at the British Medical Research Council's laboratories. At Cambridge, Köhler worked under Dr. César Milstein, an Argentinean-born researcher with whom Köhler would eventually share the Nobel Prize. At the time, Milstein, who was Köhler's senior by 19 years, was a distinguished immunologist, and he actively encouraged Köhler in his research interests. Eventually, it was while working in the Cambridge laboratory that Köhler discovered the hybridoma technique.

Antibodies are produced by human plasma cells in response to any threatening and harmful bacterium, , or tumor cell. The body forms...