Niels Ryberg Finsen, the father of phototherapy, received the Nobel Prize in 1903 for physiology or medicine after proving his radical theory that light rays could cure disease and save lives. Called "The Light Hunter" by an early biographer, Finsen was born in Thorshavn in the Faeroe Islands in the North Sea. His father, Hannes Steingrim Finsen--whose ancestry dates back to Icelandic Vikings of the tenth century--was a govenor in the islands; his mother--Johanne Fröman--was also born in Iceland.

Finsen attended school in the Faeroe Islands before being sent to prep school in Denmark from which he was expelled for "...small ability and total lack of energy." In 1876, his father sent him to Reykjavík school in Iceland where he was exposed to "...an absolutely unique system of teaching him to believe nothing but what he found out for himself." In 1891, he received his medical degree...