As a boy, Willstätter proved to be a gifted student and tried to attend the best schools in Germany. But since he was a Jew, he was denied admission and was forced to attend public school. After graduation he entered the University of Munich, where he established himself in the scientific community.

He studied the structure of cocaine, the subject of his 1894 doctoral thesis, and analyzed and synthesized such similar plant extracts as atropine and tropine. One of his teachers greatly disapproved of this line of work, and Willstätter soon turned his attention to quinone chemicals, which are the basis for many dyes, including aniline black. After spending several years as a research assistant in Germany, Willstätter joined the teaching staff of the University of Zurich as a professor in 1905. He became intrigued by chlorophyll and other pigments because of their extreme...