Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner (June 14 1868 – June 26 1943), was an Austrian biologist and physician. He is noted for his development in 1901 of the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood, and in 1930 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. With Alexander S. Wiener, he identified the Rh factor in 1937. Landsteiner and Erwin Popper discovered the poliovirus in 1909. He was awarded a Lasker Award in 1946 posthumously. He was born in Vienna, Austria to Leopold Landsteiner, a journalist and newspaper editor who was also a doctor of law. His father died when Karl was six, and he was raised by his mother, Fanny Hess. He earned a medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1891, and was also well grounded in chemistry, having studied under Hermann Emil Fischer.In 1908 he became professor of pathology at the University of Vienna. In 1916 he married Helen Wlasto, and the couple had one son. Following World War I, he left for the Netherlands. In 1922 he joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, and he remained there for the remainder of his life. During this period he became an American citizen. Karl Landsteiner died of a heart attack while still working at his laboratory.

External links

* [http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1930/landsteiner-bio.html Biography at the Nobel e-Museum]
* [http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/library/1946clinical.shtml 1946 Lasker award for clinical medicine]