November 18: George Wald

Nobelist George Wald, who discovered that Vitamin A was a component of the retina and crucial to good eyesight, was born in New York to Jewish immigrant parents on this date in 1906. Wald was working in Switzerland and Germany when Hitler came to power. He returned to the U.S. in 1934 and took a post at Harvard. After receiving his Nobel prize in 1967, he used his fame as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. “Our government has become preoccupied with death, with the business of killing and being killed,” he said at MIT 1969, in an address, “A Generation in Search of a Future,” that was eventually translated into forty languages. More recently (he died in 1997), Wald issued warnings about potential dangers of genetic engineering.

“I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.” —George Wald