Novo Nordisk merged two insulin rivals, one founded by men the other had fired.
In 1924 Hans Christian Hagedorn fired the chemist Thorvald Pedersen from Nordisk, the insulin laboratory he ran, and Thorvald’s brother Harald quit too. August Krogh, Nordisk’s co-founder, told them they would never manage to make insulin on their own. The brothers’ Novo, founded in 1925, competed with Nordisk until the two merged in 1989.
Novo Nordisk on Brandseum