Doug Moe, “Saving Hearts and Killing Rats: Karl Paul Link and the Discovery of Warfarin”

Stu Levitan welcomes the biographer of modern Madison, award-winning columnist Doug Moe, for a conversation about his latest book, Saving Hearts and Killing Rats: Karl Paul Link and the Discovery of Warfarin. It’s the first detailed look at one of the most important and most honored biochemists of the 20th century — the brilliant, unconventional, and seemingly bipolar University of Wisconsin scientist whose discoveries led to two synthetic compounds: the rat-killing Warfarin and the heart-saving Coumadin. And all because at the depths of the Great Depression a St. Croix farmer turned to his state government to learn why his cows were dying of internal bleeding after eating sweet clover hay that had gone bad. It’s quite a story about quite a scientist, which Doug Moe tells quite well.