Abstract
THE award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine for 1948 has been made to Dr. Paul Mü ller for his discovery of the effects as an insecticide of D.D.T. Drs. P. Lä uger, P. Mü ller and H. Martin were the leaders of an intensive research for insecticidal chemicals in the Basle laboratories of J. R. Geigy, S.A., which extended more than twenty years. The researches were directed originally towards the discovery of mothproofing agents to be incorporated in fabrics. It Was in the section of research entrusted to Paul Müller that D.D.T. was actually synthesized and its contact insecticidal properties discovered. It seems to have been in the course of field trials that its remarkable effectiveness against the Colorado beetle was noticed. It was soon found to be equally toxic to the louse and the mosquito. The material was brought to the notice of medical entomologists in Great Britain and the United States at a critical moment in the War when the supplies of pyrethrum were rapidly falling short of the demand. Soon it was being produced in very large quantities on both sides of the Atlantic. It proved of enormous value in combating typhus and malaria during the War, and now it is being employed with success in campaigns for the complete eradication of malaria from island areas. It is an equally valuable weapon in agricultural entomology and has provided a great stimulus to the search for yet other insecticides.
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Nobel Prize for Medicine: Dr. Paul Müller. Nature 162, 727 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162727a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162727a0