Bradford Grammar School old-boy Dr Frederick William Eurich is widely credited with finding a way to eradicate anthrax – also known as the Bradford Disease.
Working in a laboratory in the city’s Technical College, Eurich came up with the use of formaldehyde, leading to a decrese in the cases of deadly anthrax disease caught by 19th-century wool handlers.
In recognition of the thousands of lives saved as a result of his work, Eurich was awarded the Gold Medal of the Textile Institute.
Although born in Germany in 1869, Eurich was a Bradford Grammar School boy, who went on to become a bacteriologist.
His research into the cause of anthrax has been described as “extensive” and “personally-dangerous”.
The work led to the sterilisation of wool at the point of entry into the UK.
It has been suggested, however, that Bradford-born doctor John H Bell did the pioneering work decades earlier on the way killer spores were transmitted to those employed in the wool trade.
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