Arrowsmith

Martin Arrowsmith, a doctor's son from a small Midwestern town, is inspired as a medical student by the stern German bacteriologist Max Gottlieb to devote his life to pure science. But the world keeps pulling him away: country practice, public health politics, a fashionable clinic, and finally a research institute in New York, where he discovers a virus that destroys bacteria and is sent to fight an outbreak of plague on a Caribbean island, where he must choose between saving lives and completing his experiment.

Sinclair Lewis wrote the novel with the help of the microbiologist Paul de Kruif and published it in 1925; it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis refused. It is one of the first great novels about scientific research. Read Lewis's Main Street and Babbitt.