Nobel Prize Recipient. Leopold Ruzicka received international recognition after being awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes." He shared jointly the Nobel Prize with German Chemist Adolf Butenandt, who was forced in 1939 by the Nazi Party to refuse the award, but accepted it in 1949. He received 22 nominations for the Nobel candidacy. Born Lavoslav Ruzicka, he changed his first name to Leopold when he began to publish research papers. His childhood home was in Croatia, when the country was part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Besides Croatian, his family's ancestry was German, Czech and Austrian. After attending local schools, he changed his mind about becoming a priest, thus he made plans to major in chemistry in hope of finding employment. His father died in 1891. With political unrest with rioting in Croatia, plus not wanting to take the strict entrance examinations in local institutions, he left for Germany to further his education. At the High Technical School in Karlsruhe in Germany, he completed his laboratory courses in 21 months and then immediately started his doctoral work on ketenes, which he earned in 1910. His doctoral supervisor was Dr. Herman Staudinger, who would become the 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He became Staudinger's assistant and followed him in 1912 to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He became a Swiss citizen and lectured at the institute. His students respected him. Starting lecturing in his unique method at 8 AM, he would draw notes on a chalk board, reasoning that seeing along with hearing would help the student retain the data. Although he had research facilities, he was receiving little to no income for lecturing. From his studies of an insecticide on plants, he came in contact with the chemistry of terpene, a vegetable oil that has a very musky odor. Starting in 1916, he helped to develop perfume by synthesizing this and other odors, and eventually in 1921 he allied with one of the oldest perfume companies in Europe, making an excellent income. This became an academic- industrial collaboration, fruitful for both partners. In 1926 he became a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and three years later, he became a professor of chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which is today the national research facility called ETH Zurich. In the mid-1930s, he isolated the molecular structure of several male sex hormones, testosterone and androsterone, and synthesized them. Since Europe was in turmoil with Nazi forces invading other countries in 1939, the Nobel Prize was presented in the recipient's home country instead of Stockholm. His presentation took place on the morning of January 16, 1940 in the main lecture hall at the institute where the Swedish ambassador, on behalf of the King of Sweden, presented Ruzicka with the Nobel medal and diploma. During World War II, many of his oldest and closest colleagues left the laboratory, but young, bright chemists replaced them. One was Croatian-Swiss chemist, Valimir Prelog, who would receive half of the 1975 Nobel Prize. When Ruzicka retired in 1957, Prelog was promoted to his position. At the beginning of the war, Ruzicka did serve in the Swiss Army for two years, mainly helping refugees, who were mostly Jewish students from East European countries. He worked to rescue Jewish scientists from Nazi Germany. For establishing the "Yugoslavian-Swiss Aid Committee," he was rewarded a medal from the leader of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito. After World War I, Ruzicka's Croatia had been merged into Yugoslavia, which honored him with the Order of the Yugoslav Flag with Golden Wreath in 1974. He was later politically active in protests against the accumulation of atomic weapons. In the 1950s, he became interested in the field of biochemistry, the problems of evolution, and genesis of life, particularly to the biogenesis of terpenes. He was a member of several European scientific societies. With the royalties from his many patents, he purchased several displaced Dutch paintings that were available after the war and placed them on display at the Kunsthaus Zürich, the largest art museum in Switzerland. In the categories of Chemistry or Physics, he nominated 42 Nobel candidates over the years, with all receiving the covet award except two. He married twice with no children; his first was in 1912, which ended in divorce in 1950 and the next year, he married his secretary, who had an adult son. He succumbed to post-operative complications. He suffered from color blindness. His quote: "Academic freedom consists in being allowed to work far harder than prescribed." Annually since 1957, the Ruzicka Prize is awarded by ETH Zurich for outstanding work done by young Swiss chemists or chemists, who are working in Switzerland. In his hometown of Vukovar, the house where he was born has been converted into a modest-size Ruzicka Museum.