Domagk, Gerhard Johannes Paul

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 30 October 1895 Lagow, Brandenburg, Germany

d. 24 April 1964 Burgberg, Germany

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German physician, biochemist and pharmacologist, pioneer of antibacterial chemotherapy.

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Domagk's studies in medicine were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War and his service in the Army, delaying his qualification at Kiel until 1921. For a short while he worked at the University of Greifswald, but in 1925 he was appointed Reader in Pathology at the University of Munster, where he remained as Extraordinary Professor of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy (1928) and Professor (1958).

In 1924 he published a paper on the role of the reticulo-endothelial system against infection. This led to his appointment as Director of Research by IG Farbenindustrie in their laboratory for experimental pathology and bacteriology. The planned programme of research into potential antibacterial chemotherapeutic drugs led, via the discovery of the dye Prontosil rubrum by his colleagues, to his reporting in 1936 the clinical antistreptococcal effects of the sulphonamide drugs. These results were confirmed in other countries, but owing to problems with the Nazi authorities he was unable to receive until 1947 the Nobel Prize that he was awarded in 1939.

Domagk turned his interest to the chemotherapy of tuberculosis, and in 1946 he was able to report the therapeutic activity of the thiosemicarbazones, which, although too toxic for general use, in their turn led to the discovery of the potent and effective isoniazid. In his later years he moved into the field of cancer chemotherapy, but interestingly he wrote, "One should not have too great expectations of the future of cytostatic agents." His only daughter was one of the first patients to have a severe streptococcal infection successfully treated with Prontosil rubrum.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Nobel Prize for Medicine 1939. Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Paul Ehrlich Gold Medal.

Bibliography

1935, "Ein Beitrag zur Chemotherapie der bakteriellen Infektionen", Deutsche med. Woch.

1924, Virchows Archiv für Path. Anat. und Physiol. u.f. klin. Med. 253:294–638.

Further Reading

1964, Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society: Gerhard Domagk, London.

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