When William Rose was 19 he started as a graduate student in the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. Four years later, in 1911, he finished his PhD with L. B. Mendel, finishing a series of studies on the origin of creatine and creatinine. Rose served in several academic posts before accepting a position at the University of Texas Galveston Medical School to organize a department of biochemistry. In 1922, he went to the University of Illinois as professor of physiological chemistry, a title which was changed to professor of biochemistry in 1936. From 1922 to 1955 he transformed his department...