Heinrich Otto Wieland was born on June 4, 1877, in Pforzheim, Germany, to Theodor and Elise Blom Wieland. Theodor Wieland was a pharmaceutical chemist, a career his son would pursue. After he received his Ph.D. in 1901 from the University of Munich, he remained at the university to do research, eventually becoming a lecturer in 1904 and a senior lecturer in 1913. In 1917 he was appointed professor at the Technische Hochschule in Munich, but was granted leave to work for Fritz Haber's chemical warfare research organization at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. At the end of World War I he returned to Munich, but left in 1921 to accept a professorship at the University of Freiburg. In 1925, Wieland returned to the University of Munich as professor and director of the Baeyer Laboratory, where he remained until his retirement in 1950.

Wieland's early research was concerned with the chemistry of organic nitrogen compounds. He...