Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner
ForMemRS
Born(1868-06-14)14 June 1868
Baden bei Wien, Austria-Hungary
Died26 June 1943(1943-06-26) (aged 75)
New York City, US
Citizenship
  • Austria
  • United States (from 1929)[1]
Alma materUniversity of Vienna (MD, 1891)
Known forResearch of blood group system, discovery of Rh factor, discovery of poliovirus
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
  • Medicine
  • virology
Institutions
Signature

Karl Landsteiner ForMemRS[2] (German: [kaʁl ˈlantˌʃtaɪnɐ]; 14 June 1868 – 26 June 1943[3]) was an Austrian-American biologist, physician, and immunologist.[4] He emigrated with his family to New York in 1923 at the age of 55 for professional opportunities, working for the Rockefeller Institute.

He had distinguished the main blood groups in 1901, having developed the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood. In 1937, with Alexander S. Wiener, he identified the Rhesus factor, thus enabling physicians to transfuse blood without endangering the patient's life. With Constantin Levaditi and Erwin Popper, he discovered the polio virus in 1909. He received the Aronson Prize in 1926. In 1930, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was posthumously awarded the Lasker Award in 1946, and has been described as the father of transfusion medicine.[5][6]

  1. ^ Dorner, Friedrich; Schwarz, Hans Peter (2003). "Karl Landsteiner and his major contributions to haematology". British Journal of Haematology. 121 (4): 556–565. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2141.2003.04295.x. PMID 12752096. S2CID 36393411.
  2. ^ Rous, P. (1947). "Karl Landsteiner. 1868–1943". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 5 (15): 294–324. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1947.0002. JSTOR 769085. S2CID 161789667.
  3. ^ "Karl Landsteiner". Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1922–1941. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company. 1965. Retrieved 12 June 2018.
  4. ^ "Karl Landsteiner", Jewish Virtual Library
  5. ^ Shurin, Michael R.; Shurin, Galina V.; Shurin, Ken M. (2022). Basic and Clinical Immunology by Names. Springer Nature. p. 83. ISBN 978-3-031-14528-5.
  6. ^ Wiener, A. S. (1968). "Karl Landsteiner: Father of Blood Grouping and Immunochemistry". Acta Geneticae Medicae et Gemellologiae. 17 (4): 641–646. doi:10.1017/s112096230001249x. PMID 4895093.