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George Rosenkranz, a chemical engineer known for his development of hormone-based contraceptives in the 1950s, died June 23 at his home in Atherton, California. He was 102.
Over a research career spanning two continents and more than 40 years, Rosenkranz directed the pharmaceutical company that first synthesized a synthetic form of progesterone, had his name on hundreds of scientific papers and patents, and received multiple awards from scientific organizations and from the Mexican government.
Despite that, “he was a very humble man,” Roberto Rosenkranz, one of his three sons with wife Edith, tells the Los Angeles Times. “He never was out to take credit.”
Born György Rosenkranz in Budapest on August 20, 1916, he gravitated towards scientific research early in life. Starting university at the age of 17 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Rosenkranz worked in the lab of Leopold Ruzicka, a ...
