Kermack went from milk yields into the Royal Air Force, emerged after brief service to do industrial chemistry as a civilian, and then around 1921 joined the Royal College of Physicians Laboratory in Edinburgh, where he worked on chemical projects until a lab experiment blew up in his face. I mean that literally. He was blinded by caustic alkali. Twenty-six years old. But instead of becoming an invalid and a mope, he became a theoretician.
