Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner (June 14, 1868 – June 26, 1943), was an Austrian biologist and physician. He is noted for his development in 1902 of the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood, and in 1930 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. With Alexander S. Wiener, he identified the Rh factor in 1937. He was awarded a Lasker Award in 1946 posthumously. Image File history File links 1karl_landsteiner. ... Image File history File links 1karl_landsteiner. ... is the 165th day of the year (166th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1868 (MDCCCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Monday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link will display full 1943 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of organisms. ... The Doctor by Luke Fildes This article is about the term physician, one type of doctor; for other uses of the word doctor see Doctor. ... 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... This article is about human blood types (or blood groups). ... Agglutination is the clumping of particles. ... Year 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine from 1901 to the present day. ... Dr. Alexander S. Wiener (1907-1976), a lifelong resident of New York City, was recognized internationally for his contributions to science. ... A blood type is a description an individuals characteristics of red blood cells due to substances (carbohydrates and proteins) on the cell membrane. ... Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards have been awarded annually since 1946 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science. ...

He was born in Vienna, Austria to Leopold Landsteiner, a journalist and newspaper editor who was also a doctor of law. His father died when Karl was six, and he was raised by his mother, Fanny Hess. He earned a medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1891, and was also wellgrounded in chemistry, having studied under Hermann Emil Fischer. In 1908 he became professor of pathology at the University of Vienna. In 1916 he married Helen Wlasto, and the couple had one son. Following World War I, he left for the Netherlands. In 1922 he joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, and he remained there for the remainder of his life. During this period he became an American citizen. Karl Landsteiner died of a heart attack while still working at his laboratory. “Wien” redirects here. ... For other uses, see Journalist (disambiguation). ... Editing may also refer to audio editing or film editing. ... The University of Vienna (German: ) is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. ... Year 1891 (MDCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ... Hermann Emil Fischer (October 9, 1852 - July 15, 1919) was a German chemist and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1902. ... 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... A renal cell carcinoma (chromophobe type) viewed on a hematoxylin & eosin stained slide Pathologist redirects here. ... 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... Year 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Rockefeller University is a small private university focusing primarily on graduate education and research in the biomedical fields, located in the southeasternmost corner of the Upper East Side of Manhattan island in New York City, New York. ... “NY” redirects here. ... Acute myocardial infarction (AMI or MI), more commonly known as a heart attack, is a disease state that occurs when the blood supply to a part of the heart is interrupted. ...

Taken from Nobelprize.org

Karl Landsteiner was born in Vienna on June 14, 1868. His father, Leopold Landsteiner, a doctor of law, was a well-known journalist and newspaper publisher, who died when Karl was six years old. Karl was brought up by his mother, Fanny Hess, to whom he was so devoted that a death mask of her hung on his wall until he died. After leaving school, Landsteiner studied medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1891. Even while he was a student he had begun to do biochemical research and in 1891 he published a paper on the influence of diet on the composition of blood ash. To gain further knowledge of chemistry he spent the next five years in the laboratories of Hantzsch at Zurich, Emil Fischer at Wurzburg, and E. Bamberger at Munich.

Returning to Vienna, Landsteiner resumed his medical studies at the Vienna General Hospital. In 1896 he became an assistant under Max von Gruber in the Hygiene Institute at Vienna. Even at this time he was interested in the mechanisms of immunity and in the nature of antibodies. From 1898 till 1908 he held the post of assistant in the University Department of Pathological Anatomy in Vienna, the Head of which was Professor A. Weichselbaum, who had discovered the bacterial cause of meningitis and with Fraenckel had discovered the pneumococcus. Here Landsteiner worked on morbid physiology rather than on morbid anatomy. In this he was encouraged by Weichselbaum, in spite of the criticism of others in this Institute. In 1908 Weichselbaum secured his appointment as Prosector in the Wilhelminaspital in Vienna, where he remained until 1919. In 1911 he became Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the University of Vienna, but without the corresponding salary. Up to the year 1919, after twenty years of work on pathological anatomy, Landsteiner with a number of collaborators had published many papers on his findings in morbid anatomy and on immunology. He discovered new facts about the immunology of syphilis, added to the knowledge of the Wassermann reaction, and discovered the immunological factors which he named haptens (it then became clear that the active substances in the extracts of normal organs used in this reaction were, in fact, haptens). He made fundamental contributions to our knowledge of paroxysmal haemoglobinuria.

He also showed that the cause of poliomyelitis could be transmitted to monkeys by injecting into them material prepared by grinding up the spinal cords of children who had died from this disease, and, lacking in Vienna monkeys for further experiments, he went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where monkeys were available. His work there, together with that independently done by Flexner and Lewis, laid the foundations of our knowledge of the cause and immunology of poliomyelitis.

Landsteiner made numerous contributions to both pathological anatomy, histology and immunology, all of which showed, not only his meticulous care in observation and description, but also his biological understanding. But his name will no doubt always be honored for his discovery in 1901 of, and outstanding work on, the blood groups, for which he was given the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1930.

In 1875 Landois had reported that, when man is given transfusions of the blood of other animals, these foreign blood corpuscles are clumped and broken up in the blood vessels of man with the liberation of hemoglobin. In 1901-1903 Landsteiner pointed out that a similar reaction may occur when the blood of one human individual is transfused, not with the blood of another animal, but with that of another human being, and that this might be the cause of shock, jaundice, and haemoglobinuria that had followed some earlier attempts at blood transfusions.

His suggestions, however, received little attention until, in 1909, he classified the bloods of human beings into the now well-known A, B, AB, and O groups and showed that transfusions between individuals of groups A or B do not result in the destruction of new blood cells and that this catastrophe occurs only when a person is transfused with the blood of a person belonging to a different group. Earlier, in 1901-1903, Landsteiner had suggested that, because the characteristics which determine the blood groups are inherited, the blood groups may be used to decide instances of doubtful paternity. Much of the subsequent work that Landsteiner and his pupils did on blood groups and the immunological uses they made of them were done, not in Vienna, but in New York. For in 1919 conditions in Vienna were such that laboratory work was very difficult and, seeing no future for Austria, Landsteiner obtained the appointment of Prosector to a small Roman Catholic Hospital at The Hague. Here he published, from 1919-1922, twelve papers on new haptens that he had discovered, on conjugates with proteins which were capable of inducing anaphylaxis and on related problems, and also on the serological specificity of the haemoglobins of different species of animals. His work in Holland came to an end when he was offered a post in the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York and he moved there together with his family. It was here that he did, in collaboration with Levine and Wiener, the further work on the blood groups which greatly extended the number of these groups, and here in collaboration with Wiener studied bleeding in the new-born, leading to the discovery of the Rh-factor in blood, which relates the human blood to the blood of the rhesus monkey.

To the end of his life, Landsteiner continued to investigate blood groups and the chemistry of antigens, antibodies and other immunological factors that occur in the blood. It was one of his great merits that he introduced chemistry into the service of serology.

Rigorously exacting in the demands he made upon himself, Landsteiner possessed untiring energy. Throughout his life he was always making observations in many fields other than those in which his main work was done (he was, for instance, responsible for having introduced dark-field illumination in the study of spirochetes). By nature somewhat pessimistic, he preferred to live away from people.

Landsteiner married Helen Wlasto in 1916. Dr. E. Landsteiner is a son by this marriage.

In 1939 he became Emeritus Professor at the Rockefeller Institute, but continued to work as energetically as before, keeping eagerly in touch with the progress of science. It is characteristic of him that he died pipette in hand. On June 24, 1943, he had a heart attack in his laboratory and died two days later in the hospital of the Institute in which he had done such distinguished work.

See also

• List of Austrian scientists
• List of Austrians
• Jan Janský
• Rhesus blood group system
• Blood type

This is a list of Austrian scientists. ... The following list is a selection of famous Austrians. ... Jan Janský (April 3, 1873, Prague – September 8, 1921, Černošice near Prague) was a Czech serologist, neurologist and psychiatrist. ... The term Rhesus blood group system refers to the five main Rhesus antigens (C, c, D, E and e) as well as the many other less frequent Rhesus antigens. ... This article is about human blood types (or blood groups). ...

References

• Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972, ISBN 0-385-17771-2.

Isaac Asimov (January 2?, 1920?[1] – April 6, 1992), IPA: , originally Исаак Озимов but now transcribed into Russian as Айзек Азимов) was a Russian-born American Jewish author and professor of biochemistry, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. ... See also: 1971 in literature, other events of 1972, 1973 in literature, list of years in literature. ...

External links

• Biography at the Nobel e-Museum
• 1946 Lasker award for clinical medicine