Microbiologist Pierre Paul Emile Roux never received the Nobel Prize. The very first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Emil Adolf von Behring for application of a serum for treatment of diphtheria. It was not entirely fair, which Behring himself brought up in his Nobel lecture. The Paris Academy was more objective: its award for the discovery of a method for treatment of diphtheria was split between Behring and Roux. After all, it was Roux who, on November 1, 1894, announced the creation of the diphtheria anti-toxin serum.
The Egyptian disease or plague ulcer of the pharynx, as diphtheria was called in Antiquity, was no longer deadly to adults and children. And that was the best award that the microbiologist Roux could hope to get.
