A gifted experimentalist, Richard Willstätter's pioneering work on natural products, especially chlorophylls and anthocyanins (plant pigments), was honored with the 1915 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In 1924 Willstätter, who was Jewish, resigned from his position at the University of Munich in protest against the anti-Semitism of some of the faculty. This act of conscience seriously hampered his research activity. In 1939 the anti-Semitic policies of the Third Reich forced him to emigrate to Switzerland, where he spent the remaining few years of his life.

Richard Martin Willstätter was born in Karlsruhe, Germany on August 13, 1872, the second of two sons of Max and Sophie Ulmann Willstätter. Willstätter's father was a textile merchant and his mother's family was in the textile business. Willstätter's education began in the classical Gymnasium in Karlsruhe. When he was eleven years old, his father moved to...