Along with American physician Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), Ignaz Semmelweis was one of the first two doctors worldwide to recognize the contagious nature of puerperal fever and promote steps to eliminate it, thereby dramatically reducing maternal deaths.

Semmelweis was born in Ofen, or Tabàn, then near Buda, now part of Budapest, Hungary, on July 1, 1818, the son of a Roman Catholic shopkeeper of German descent. After graduating from the Catholic Gymnasium of Buda in 1835 and the University of Pest in 1837, he went to the University of Vienna to study law, but immediately switched to medicine. He studied at Vienna until 1839, then again at Pest until 1841, then again at Vienna, earning his M.D. in 1844. Among his teachers were Karl von Rokitansky (1804-1878), Josef Skoda (1805-1881), and Ferdinand von Hebra (1816-1880). He did postgraduate work in Vienna hospitals in obstetrics, surgery, and, under Skoda, diagnostic methods. In 1846, he...