René Jules Dubos (1901–1982), the French-American microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, was born in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France, on February 20. At the age of twenty-three, after completing his undergraduate training in agronomy, he used the money he made from translating scientific writings to travel to the United States. There he spent the rest of his prolific career, making groundbreaking contributions to antibiotic development, tuberculosis research, and environmental philosophy. René Dubos died in New York City on his eighty-first birthday.

Dubos's early work as a translator exposed him to the research of the Russian microbiologist Sergei Wino-gradsky, who stressed the importance of studying soil microbes in their natural setting, not just the sterile conditions of the laboratory. As Dubos reminisced late in life, "I have been restating that idea in all forms ever since. The main intellectual attitude that has governed all aspects of my...