Landsteiner, Karl

6/14/1868–6/26/1943
AUSTRIAN
IMMUNOLOGIST

Karl Landsteiner was one of the first scientists to study the physical processes of immunity. In the field of forensic science, he is best known for his identification and characterization of the human blood groups, A, B, and O, but his contributions spanned many areas of immunology, bacteriology, and pathology over a prolific 40-year career. He helped establish the science of immunochemistry.

Karl Landsteiner was born in Vienna on June 14, 1868. In 1891, he was awarded a medical degree by the University of Vienna. For the following five years he studied physiological chemistry in laboratories in Germany and Switzerland.

Landsteiner moved to Vienna's Institute of Pathology in 1897, where he was hired to perform autopsies. He continued to study immunology and the mysteries of blood on his own time. In 1900, Landsteiner wrote a paper in which he described the agglutination of blood that occurs when one person's blood is brought into contact with that of another. He suggested that the phenomenon was not due to pathology, as was the prevalent thought at the time, but was due to the unique nature of the individual's blood. In 1901, Landsteiner demonstrated that the blood serum of some people could clump the blood of others. From his observations he devised the idea of mutually incompatible blood groups. He placed blood types into three groups: A, B, and C (later referred to as O). Two of his colleagues subsequently added a fourth group, AB. In 1930 he received the Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery.

In 1907, the first successful transfusions were achieved by Dr. Reuben Ottenberg of Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, guided by Landsteiner's work. Landsteiner's accomplishment saved many lives on the battlefields of World War I, where transfusion of compatible blood was first performed on a large scale. In 1902, Landsteiner was appointed as a full member of the Imperial Society of Physicians in Vienna. That same year he presented a lecture, together with Max Richter of the Vienna University Institute of Forensic Medicine, in which the two reported a new method of typing dried blood stains to help solve crimes in which bloodstains are left at the scene.

In 1906, Landsteiner and Victor Mucha introduced the use of the dark-field method of diagnosis for the presence of the spirochete of syphilis. Landsteiner also determined the viral cause of poliomyelitis with research that laid the foundation for the eventual development of a polio vaccine. In 1908, Landsteiner reported the transmittal of poliomyelitis to monkeys from human material, thus substantiating the theory that the cause of the disease was a virus. In 1919, he went from his work as professor of pathologic anatomy at the University of Vienna to The Hague in the Netherlands as pathologist at the R. K. Ziekenhuis. In 1922, he went to New York City's Rockefeller Institute and continued at the institute until his death. In 1929, he became a citizen of the United States.

In 1927, Landsteiner and Philip Levine announced the discovery of the M and N agglutinogens, and in 1940, Landsteiner and a colleague discovered still another group of agglutinogens called the Rh factors. Of fundamental importance to the rise of immunochemistry was Landsteiner's demonstration that serological specificity is based on the chemical structure of antigens. Although he officially retired in 1939, Landsteiner continued his work in immunology until two days before his death in 1943, at the age of 75.

SEE ALSO Antigen; Blood; Bloodstain evidence; Immune system.