Hans Zinsser

Infobox_Scientist
name = Hans Zinsser


image_width =
caption =
birth_date = November 17, 1878
birth_place = New York City
death_date = September 4, 1940
death_place = New York City
residence = flagicon|USA USA
nationality = flagicon|USA American
field = Physician, bacteriologist, and epidemiologist
work_institution =Columbia University
Stanford University
Harvard Medical School
alma_mater = Columbia University
doctoral_advisor = Philip Hanson Hiss
doctoral_students = William Hammon
known_for = Typhus
prizes =
religion = Agnostic [cite news
author=
title=Romantic Self
date=1940-09-16
work=Time Magazine
url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,764711,00.html?promoid=googlep
accessdate=2008-08-10]
footnotes =

Hans Zinsser (November 17, 1878 – September 4, 1940) was a U.S. bacteriologist and a prolific author. [cite journal |author=Summers WC |title=Hans Zinsser: a tale of two cultures |journal=The Yale journal of biology and medicine |volume=72 |issue=5 |pages=341–7 |year=1999 |pmid=11049165 |doi=] The son of German immigrants, Zinsser was born in New York City in 1878. Zinsser received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1899 and completed both a masters degree and a doctorate in medicine there in 1903. [cite journal | author = Mueller JH | title = Hans Zinsser, 1878–1940 | journal = Journal of Bacteriology | year = 1940 | volume = 40 | issue = 6 | pages = i2 | url = http://jb.asm.org/cgi/reprint/40/6/i2] After holding a series of academic medicine positions, Zinsser became an associate professor at Stanford University in 1910. In 1913, Zinsser moved to a position at his "alma mater"; in 1923 he was hired by Harvard Medical School where he stayed until his death. He is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Zinsser's scientific work focused on bacteriology and immunology and he is greatly associated with Brill’s disease as well as typhus. He is known for his work in isolating the typhus bacterium and developing a protective vaccine. He wrote several books about biology and bacteria, notably "Rats, Lice and History," a "biography" of typhus fever. [cite book | author = Zinsser H | title = Rats, Lice, and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals With the Life History of Typhus Fever | publisher = Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers | location = New York | year = 1996 | isbn = 1-884-82247-9 (Originally published in 1935, with another edition in 1963.)] "Rats, Lice and History" was republished in 2007 by Transaction Publishers. [cite book | author = Zinsser H | title = Rats, Lice, and History| publisher = Transaction Publishers | location = New Jersey | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-1-4128-0672-5 ]

When "Rats, Lice and History" appeared in 1935, Hans Zinsser was a highly regarded Harvard biologist who had never written about historical events. Although he had published under a pseudonym, virtually all of his previous writings had dealt with infections and immunity and had appeared either in medical and scientific journals or in book format. Today he is best remembered as the author of "Rats, Lice, and History", which gone through multiple editions and remains a masterpiece of science writing for a general readership.

To Zinsser, scientific research was high adventure and the investigation of infectious disease, a field of battle. Yet at the same time he maintained a love of literature and philosophy. His goal in "Rats, Lice and History" was to bring science, philosophy, and literature together to establish the importance of disease, and especially epidemic infectious disease, as a major force in human affairs. Zinsser cast his work as the “biography” of a disease. In his view, infectious disease simply represented an attempt of a living organism to survive. From a human perspective, an invading pathogen was abnormal; from the perspective of the pathogen, it was perfectly normal.

This book is devoted to a discussion of the biology of typhus and history of typhus fever in human affairs. Zinsser begins by pointing out that the louse was the constant companion of human beings. Under certain conditions–failure to wash or to change clothing–lice proliferated. The typhus pathogen was transmitted by rat fleas to human beings, who then transmitted it to other humans and in some strains from human to human.

References

Further reading

* Zinsser, Hans "As I Remember Him: The Biography of R.S." Gloucester, Mass. Peter Smith 1970 with an introduction including biographic notes by Edward Weeks.

External links

* [http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/89/Hans-Zinsser.html Biography of Hans Zinsser]