Johannes Fibiger was a Danish bacteriologist whose early work on childhood diphtheria and tuberculosis demonstrated the vital role medical research could play in controlling diseases that threatened public health. In 1926, Fibiger received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for demonstrating how cancer-like tissues could be induced experimentally in the laboratory.

Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger was born on April 23, 1867, in the Danish village of Silkeborg. His father, Christian Fibiger, was a district physician; his mother, Elfride Muller, was a writer and the daughter of a Danish politician. Fibiger attended the University of Copenhagen at age 16 and studied medicine, biology, and zoology. After earning his medical degree in 1890, he undertook several years of medical apprenticeship in various hospitals and with the Danish army.

While working as an assistant in a bacteriological laboratory at the University of Copenhagen Fibiger was persuaded to undertake doctoral work on diphtheria, a virulent childhood...