Jules Bordet

Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet (Soignies (Belgium) 13 June, 1870 – 6 April, 1961) was a Belgian immunologist and microbiologist. The bacterial genus "Bordetella" is named for him.

Biography

Ballin of Medicine at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) and began his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1894, where, in the laboratory of Elie Metchnikoff, he described phagocytosis of bacteria by white blood cells. In 1898 he described hemolysis evoked by exposure of blood serum to foreign blood cells.

In 1900, he left Paris to found the Pasteur Institute in Brussels, and made his discovery that the bacteriolytic effect of acquired specific antibody is significantly enhanced "in vivo" by the presence of innate serum components which he termed "alexine" (but which are now known as complement). This mechanism became the basis for "complement-fixation" testing methods that enabled the development of serological tests for syphilis (specifically, the development of the "Wassermann test" by August von Wassermann). The same technique is used today in serologic testing for countless other diseases.

With Octave Gengou he isolated "Bordetella pertussis" in pure culture in 1906 and posited it as the cause of whooping cough. He became Professor of Bacteriology at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1907.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to him in 1919 for his discoveries relating to immunity.

On his passing in 1961, Jules Bordet was interred in the Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels. He was a freemason and member of the lodge "Les Amis Philanthropes" of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels.fact|date=November 2007

ee also

* Institut Jules Bordet

External links

* [http://crishunt.8bit.co.uk/jules_bordet.html Jules Bordet]
* [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1919/index.html The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1919]
* [http://www.bordet.be/ Jules Bordet Institute]
* [http://www.pasteur.be/pasteur_en/index9deb.html?page=le_musee_j_bordet Jules Bordet Museum]