Calmette, Albert

Calmette, Albert (Léon Charles)

Calmette

(credit: Harlingue-H. Roger-Viollet)

(born July 12, 1863, Nice, Fr.—died Oct. 29, 1933, Paris) French bacteriologist. In the 1890s he founded the Pasteur bacteriological institutes in Saigon and later Lille. He discovered in 1908 that tuberculosis bacteria from cattle were weakened when cultured with bile, producing a strain of bacteria that provoked a protective immune reaction without causing disease. That discovery led him to develop, with Camille Guérin, a tuberculosis vaccine. He also described a test (Calmette reaction) for tuberculosis and discovered an antivenin for snakebite.