Letter from Georges Carlier, Embassy of Belgium to Michael Heidelberger

In 1953, Heidelberger was appointed to the Order of Leopold II and received a monetary prize for his contribution to the discovery in 1919 of Tryparsamide, an antitrypanosomal agent used in the treatment of trypanosomiasis, or African Sleeping Sickness, an infectious disease endemic in large parts of Africa, including the Belgian Congo. He shared the prize with his former Rockefeller Institute colleagues Walter Jacobs, Wade H. Brown and Louis Pearce, along with the English scientist H. W. Thomas, a pioneer in the chemotherapy of the disease. However, Heidelberger protested to the Belgian Ambassador that Jacobs, whom he credited with the conceptual breakthrough that made possible the synthesis of the drug from a less effective precursor, did not receive a greater share of the prize money.