Landsteiner, Karl 1868-1943

THE FATHER OF IMMUNOLOGY

America's Second Winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Karl Landsteiner devoted years of his life to classifying the different types of human blood. A "modest, reticent man with a drooping moustache," Landsteiner became the United States' second winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1930. The Austrian-born physician received his doctor of medicine degree from the University of Vienna in 1891 and was a pathologist at the university from 1909-1919. Poor working conditions forced him to leave Vienna in 1919, but facilities in The Hague were no better. He accepted an offer from the Rockefeller Institute in New York City and went to the United States in 1922, becoming an American citizen in 1929. His 1909 classification of the four main types of human blood (A, B, AB, and O) made possible the safe transfusion of blood from one person to another, although several years passed before the knowledge was...

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