Karl LandsteinerForMemRS[1] (German:[kaʁlˈlantˌʃtaɪnɐ]; 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 fifty five for professional opportunities, working for the Rockefeller Institute.
He was born into a Jewish family. His father Leopold Landsteiner (1818–1875), a renowned Viennese journalist and editor-in-chief of Die Presse, died at age 56, when Karl was 6. The boy became very close to his mother Fanny (née Hess; 1837–1908). After graduating with the Matura exam from a Vienna secondary school, he took up the study of medicine at the University of Vienna. Landsteiner wrote his doctoral thesis in 1891. While still a student he published an essay on the influence of diets on the composition of blood.[3]
Research work in Vienna; discovery of the polio virus
Landsteiner in the lab
After returning to Vienna he became an assistant to Max von Gruber at the Hygienic Institute. In his studies he concentrated on the mechanism of immunity and the nature of antibodies. From November 1897 to 1908 Landsteiner was an assistant at the pathological-anatomical institute of the University of Vienna under Anton Weichselbaum, where he published 75 papers, dealing with issues in serology, bacteriology, virology and pathological anatomy. In addition he did some 3,600 autopsies in those ten years. Weichselbaum was Landsteiner's tutor for his postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1903.[8] From 1908 to 1920 Landsteiner was prosector at the Wilhelminenspital in Vienna and in 1911 he was sworn in as an associate professor of pathological anatomy. During that time he discovered – in co-operation with Erwin Popper – the infectious character of poliomyelitis and isolated the polio virus.[9] In recognition of this groundbreaking discovery, which proved to be the basis for the fight against polio, he was posthumously inducted into the Polio Hall of Fame at Warm Springs, Georgia, which was dedicated in January 1958.
Research of the blood groups
In 1900 Landsteiner found out that the blood of two people under contact agglutinates, and in 1901 he found that this effect was due to contact of blood with blood serum. As a result, he succeeded in identifying the three blood groups A, B and O, which he labelled C, of human blood. Landsteiner also found out that blood transfusion between persons with the same blood group did not lead to the destruction of blood cells, whereas this occurred between persons of different blood groups.[10] Based on his findings, the first successful blood transfusion was performed by Reuben Ottenberg at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in 1907.
Today, whole blood transfusions are rare. It is now well known that persons with blood group AB can accept red blood cell donations of the other blood groups, and that persons with blood group O-negative can donate red blood cells to all other groups. Individuals with blood group AB are referred to as universal recipients and those with blood group O-negative are known as universal donors. These donor-recipient relationships arise due to the fact that type O-negative blood possesses neither antigens of blood group A nor of blood group B. Therefore, the immune systems of persons with blood group A, B or AB do not refuse the donation. Further, because persons with blood group AB do not form antibodies against either the antigens of blood group A or B, they can accept red blood cells from persons with these blood groups, as well as from persons with blood group O-negative.
In 1930 Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of these achievements. For his pioneering work, he is recognized as the father of transfusion medicine.[11]
Research work in the Netherlands and the United States
After World War I, Vienna and the new republic of Austria as a whole was in a desolate economic state, a situation in which Landsteiner did not see any possibilities to carry on with his research work. He decided to move to the Netherlands and accepted a post as prosector in the small Catholic St. Joannes de Deo hospital (now MCH Westeinde) in The Hague[12] and, in order to improve his financial situation also took a job in a small factory, producing old tuberculin (tuberculinum pristinum).[13] He also published a number of papers, five of them being published in Dutch by the Royal Academy of Sciences. Yet working conditions proved to be not much better than in post-war Vienna.
So Landsteiner accepted the invitation that reached him from New York, initiated by Simon Flexner, who was familiar with Landsteiner's work, to work for the Rockefeller Institute. He arrived there with his family in the spring of 1923.[3] Throughout the 1920s Landsteiner worked on the problems of immunity and allergy. In 1927 he discovered new blood groups: M, N and P, refining the work he had begun 20 years before. Shortly thereafter, Landsteiner and his collaborator, Philip Levine, published the work and, later that same year, the types began to be used in paternity suits.
Landsteiner converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1890, and was baptised into the Catholic Church.[18] In 1916, he married Leopoldine Helene Wlasto, a Greek Orthodox woman who converted to her husband's Catholic faith.
In 1937, Landsteiner unsuccessfully[19] initiated legal action against an American publisher who had included him in the book Who's Who in American Jewry. Landsteiner said that "it will be detrimental to me to emphasize publicly the religion of my ancestors."[20]
^Speiser, Paul; Smekal, Ferdinand G. (1990). Karl Landsteiner: Entdecker der Blutgruppen und Pionier der Immunologie (3rd ed.). Berlin: Blackwell Ueberreuter Wissenschaft. p. 24. ISBN978-3-89412-084-9.
^Landsteiner, K.; Popper, E. (1909). "Übertragung der Poliomyelitis acuta auf Affen" [Transmission of Poliomyelitis acuta to monkeys]. Zeitschrift für Immunitätsforschung und experimentelle Therapie [Journal for Research on Immunity and Experimental Therapy] (in German). 2: 377–390.
^Landsteiner, Karl (1900). "Zur Kenntnis der antifermentativen, lytischen und agglutinierenden Wirkungen des Blutserums und der Lymphe". Centralblatt für Bakteriologie, Parasitenkunde und Infektionskrankheiten. 27: 357–362.
^"Wie was Karl Landsteiner?" [Who was Karl Landsteiner?]. Landsteiner Instituut (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 16 December 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
^Staudacher, Anna L. (2009) "... meldet den Austritt aus dem mosaischen Glauben". 18000 Austritte aus dem Judentum in Wien, 1868–1914: Namen – Quellen – Daten. Peter Lang, Frankfurt, ISBN978-3-631-55832-4, p. 349
