by Dr Steve McCabe
HARALD zur Hausen is not a household name – he should be but he isn’t. Yet despite humble origins and modest beginnings he won a Nobel prize in 2008 for a medical discovery that will ultimately save the lives of millions of women around the world (and quite a few men too).
Zur Hausen was born in 1936 in the German town of Gelsenkirchen in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He and his entire family survived the Second World War despite extensive bombing of the area. But the war had an impact on his early education. As he says himself “Since schools were closed due to bombing raids in 1943, my elementary school training was full of gaps”.