[Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) and the specificity of serological reactions, one hundred years ago and now].
One hundred years after his discovery of the AB0 blood groups, the monumental work of Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943, Nobel Prize 1930) on the specificity of serological reactions is widely recognised. His work on isoantigen reactions included the discovery, together with Levine and Wiener, of the Rhesus factor. Landsteiner did much to develop our understanding of autoantibody reactions and also contributed insights into the aetiology of infectious diseases that were rampant in his time. His work in immunochemistry included the discovery of hapten antigenicity. However, most of all he wanted to be remembered for his theory on the specificity of serological reactions, which he had strongly substantiated with his own work. Landsteiner suffered from the shortages in Vienna at the end of World War I. He and his family moved to the Netherlands in 1919. There he worked as pathologist at the Red Cross Hospital in The Hague until his move to the Rockefeller Institute in New York in 1923. Nowadays, his work is celebrated for its numerous excellent contributions to the fields of transfusion and transplantation medicine, population genetics, immunology, and infectiology.
de Meer
K
K
VU Medisch Centrum, afd. Kindergeneeskunde, Postbus 7075, 1007 MB Amsterdam. novosilski@hotmail.com
D000486:Allergy and Immunology / Q000266:history*; D001317:Austria; D001789:Blood Group Antigens / Q000266:history; D006405:Hematology / Q000266:history; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D009613:Nobel Prize; D010336:Pathology / Q000266:history
D001789:Blood Group Antigens
Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) en de specificiteit van serologische reacties, honderd jaar geleden en nu.