Gerhard Domagk’s Prontosil saved Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s life in 1936. Prontosil would then be featured in the New York Times, and sales skyrocketed. The human body splits Prontosil in two to produce sulfonamide, which interferes with the synthesis of folic acid, essential for cell replication, especially in bacteria. Sulfonamides were born. For this, Domagk would receive the Nobel Prize in 1939. Domagk was employed by the German company IGF (which would later produce the Zyklon-B used to exterminate inmates in extermination camps).
