Nobel Prize in Chemistry Recipient. Richard Martin Willstätter received recognition after being awarded the 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, according to the Nobel Committee, "for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll." Starting in 1909, he had 28 nominations to be a Nobel candidate. His father, a textile merchant, attempted to enroll him in a private school, but he was not allowed as he was Jewish. When he was eleven years old, his father moved to New York City in search of better economic opportunities and to escape prejudices in Germany, leaving him with his mother and brother. After receiving his education in public schools, he entered the University of Munich, receiving his doctorate in chemistry in 1894 where he studied with 1905 Nobel Prize for chemistry recipient Adolf von Baeyer. He and Dr. Alfred Einhorn published the professional article, "Manufacture of Cocaine," in the August of 1894 issue of "Scientific America." His doctoral thesis was on the structure of cocaine. Staying for fifteen years at the University of Munich, he was an unpaid lecturer from 1896, pursuing his scientific work independently, until in early 1902 when he was promoted to Extraordinary Professor. In the summer of 1905 to have a laboratory to meet his needs, he accepted the position of Professorial Chair at Federal Technical College in Zurich, Switzerland. Returning to Germany, his studies concentrated on plant and animal pigments, and in 1912 at the University of Berlin, he showed that chlorophyll was a mixture of two compounds, "Chlorophyll A" and "Chlorophyll B." He also discovered the similarities between chlorophyll and hemoglobin, the red part of human blood. These discoveries earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1915 after Baeyer retired, he returned to the University of Munich. During World War I, he designed a gas mask for protection from poisonous gases. Thirty million masks were manufactured by 1917 and Willstätter was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. Making a protest against antisemitism, he retired at the age of 53 after one too many Jewish scientists were overlooked for promotion. Being very vocal, he rejected any offers to return to a laboratory elsewhere, he was going to stay in his home in Germany. Although he knew he needed to leave Germany in the early 1930s when the Nazi Party came to power, he did not. With the help of a dedicated pupil, Arthur Stoll in 1938, he escaped Germany to Switzerland as the Nazi Gestapo were actively seeking him to be sent to a concentration camp. With this unplanned relocation, he loss all but a meager part of his belongings. He did some private research in his home, first in Germany and later in Switzerland. In 1903 he married the daughter of a professor, who died in 1908 with appendicitis, and the couple had a son, who died at age eleven, and a daughter, who became a chemist relocating the United States in the 1930s. A granddaughter became a professor emerita of the law school at the University of California Davis. He spent the last three years of his life writing his biography, "From My Life," which was published posthumously in 1949, and in 1965 published in English. He died of a heart attack. He also published "Investigations on Chlorophyll" in 1913. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the Davey Medal from the Royal Academy in London in 1932 and the Willard Gibbs Medal in 1933. He was a foreign member of the American Chemical Society from 1929 and the Royal Academy from 1933.