Training and Early Career
He was born in LaPorte, Indiana to a Lutheran minister of German descent as one of ten children. He was schooled locally, and attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied agricultural chemistry at the College of Agriculture from 1918 to 1925, obtaining an MS in 1923 and a PhD in 1925. He was then chosen by the national Education Board for a postdoctoral scholarship, and relocated to Europe. He briefly worked with carbohydrate chemist Sir James Irvine at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and from 1926 with Fritz Pregl, inventor of microchemistry and Nobel Laureate. Finally he spent several months with organic chemist and future Nobel laureate Paul Karrer in the latter's lab in Zurich; during this period Link suffered from tuberculosis, requiring recuperation in Davos. Around this time he may have acquired his taste for dressing eccentrically.
He was offered an assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1927, and was promoted to associate professor in 1928. He worked initially on plant carbohydrates and resistance to disease. He married Elizabeth Feldman in 1930; they were to have three sons.
Read more about this topic: Karl Paul Link
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