Robert Furchgott details his life, from boyhood in Charleston, South Carolina, through winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1998. His grandfather Max Furchgott had come to the United States from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ca. 1865. With brothers Herman and Leopold, he opened a dry goods store at the corner of King and Calhoun Streets in Charleston, S.C. Max Furchgott left Charleston, ca. 1886, and lived for a while in New York City, returning to Charleston with his sons, Melvin, Arthur, and Oscar, who then had a similar store. For a year or so, Arthur (father of the interviewee) also ran a filling station on Meeting Street. He married Philipena Sorentrue, the daughter of Janie Brown (whose grandfather Simon Brown had emigrated from Germany to Blackville, S.C., in the 1840s) and Jacob Sorentrue. They had three sons, Arthur, Robert (b. 1916), and Max. They grew up in downtown Charleston, mostly on Colonial Street. As a young boy, Robert Furchgott had his interest in science and natural history fired by the staff of the Charleston Museum, and he names those he remembers. He attended Crafts School and was not aware of other Jewish orthodox "uptown" families until he joined a local Jewish Boy Scout troop. His family moved to Orangeburg, SC, when he was about thirteen. There, he saw no prejudice at all against Jews, but knew about prejudices against African Americans. He played football and finished high school in Orangeburg. He began his college career at the University of South Carolina, but graduated from the University of North Carolina, which he found much more stimulating. He went to graduate school at Northwestern University, receiving his Ph. D. in 1940. He was deferred from military service for bad eyesight, and taught at Cornell University from 1940 to 1949; in 1941, he married Lenore Mandelbaum and they had three children. From Cornell, he went to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he continued his research on drug receptor mechanisms, among other topics. His work in endothelium-derived relaxing factor, and his demonstration of that as being nitric oxide, were factors that lead to his winning of the Nobel Prize. He describes the ceremony and events leading up to it, noting that the poor health of his second wife, Maggie Roth, who he married after his first wife's death, made the occasion one of mixed happiness and grief.
