Fibiger, Johannes Andreas Grib

Fibiger, Johannes Andreas Grib

(born April 23, 1867, Silkeborg, Den.—died Jan. 30, 1928, Copenhagen) Danish pathologist. He found that rats that had suffered stomach-tissue inflammation caused by the larvae of a worm infecting cockroaches the rats had eaten subsequently developed stomach tumours, and he induced tumours in mice and rats by feeding them infected cockroaches. His work, for which he received a 1926 Nobel Prize, supported the prevailing concept that cancer is caused by tissue irritation and led to production of chemical carcinogens for use in cancer research.

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Fibiger, Johannes Andreas Grib 

Born Apr. 23, 1867, in Silkeborg; died Jan. 30, 1928, in Copenhagen. Danish microbiologist and pathological anatomist.

Fibiger was a student of R. Koch and E. von Behring. From 1900 to 1905 he was director of an institute of clinical bacteriology. Beginning in 1900 he was also a professor of pathology at the University of Copenhagen. In 1912, Fibiger discovered tumors of the stomach in experimental rats fed cockroaches infected with the larvae of the parasitic worm Spiroptera (Nobel Prize, 1926). The specific carcinogenic action of Spiroptera was not subsequently confirmed. Fibiger’s work promoted the development of experimental oncology, particularly research on the role of carcinogens.

WORKS

“Untersuchungen über eine Nematode.” Zeitschrift für Krebsforschung, 1913, vol. 13, pp. 217–80.

REFERENCE

Secher, K. The Danish Cancer Researcher Johannes Fibiger, Professor in the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen-London, 1947.