Georg Zülzer, from Berlin, and Camille Reuter, from Luxembourg, should both be remembered on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. However, World War I and an unwise decision by the Roche board prevented the clinical application of their effective insulin preparation in 1914, and Luxembourg missed having a Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine. For a decade, internist Professor Georg Ludwig Zülzer in Berlin, using various methods, had been trying to produce insulin. A major setback for him was the negative, yet methodologically questionable, assessment of his extract by the research group led by Professor Oskar Minkowski in 1909. Finally, in the summer of 1914, Zülzer's collaboration with chemist Dr Camille Reuter from Luxembourg, who worked for Roche, led to the production of highly effective pancreatic extracts. Yet, while biochemist James Bertrand Collip's essential contributions while working in Toronto are still underestimated today, nobody remembers Camille Reuter. Nevertheless, in both cases, it was these chemists who did the most important—but least appreciated—work.