The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1955 was awarded to Vincent du Vigneaud "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone".
 

The story starts in the nineteen-twenties with insulin, a substance whose importance is now well-known. The proteins are built up from so-called amino acids, and their sulphur is due to the presence of one or two sulphur-containing amino acids: cystine and methionine. Using the experimental methods, which the development of science has put at his disposal and making the best of his own intimate knowledge of the organic chemistry of sulphur, du Vigneaud has step by step forced his way.