Theodor Svedberg, helped to turn the arcane field of colloid chemistry into a vigorous and productive field of study. In so doing, he developed the ultracentrifuge, one of the most basic and useful tools in the modern biomedical laboratory, and an achievement for which he won the 1926 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Svedberg's work was not only innovative but cross-disciplinary, having valuable applications in a variety of fields, beginning with colloid chemistry. Colloids, of which milk fat and smoke are examples, are substances dispersed (as opposed to being dissolved) in a medium; colloids cannot be observed directly under the microscope, nor do they settle out under the force of gravity. Svedberg's development of the ultracentrifuge to study solutions was of enormous importance to biologists, who believed that gaining an understanding of colloids would help them to create models of biological systems.

Theodor Svedberg--called "The Svedberg" by his colleagues--was born...