Landsteiner, Karl

Landsteiner, Karl (kärl länt`shtīnər), 1868–1943, American medical research worker, b. Vienna, M.D. Univ. of Vienna, 1891. In 1922 he came to the United States to join the staff of the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller Univ.). He later became a U.S. citizen. For his discovery of human blood groups he won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. As a result of his research in immunology and the chemistry of antigens and serological reactions, he made valuable contributions in hemolysis and in methods of studying poliomyelitis. In 1940 he identified, in collaboration with A. S. Wiener, the Rh factor.

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Landsteiner, Karl (1868–1943) immunologist; born in Vienna, Austria. He was a microbiologist and immunologist in Europe (1891–1922). He discovered the four basic human blood groups—A, B, O, and AB (1900). He also designed (with Julius Donath) the Donath-Landsteiner test for the red cell disease paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (1904), developed darkfield microscopy for the diagnosis of syphilis (1905–06), proposed a viral origin for poliomyelitis (1909–12), and demonstrated the existence of haptens, small-molecular-weight antigens conjugated to a larger protein carrier (1918–20). In 1922 he came to the U.S.A. to the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) (1922–39), where he and Philip Levine discovered the blood factors M, N, and P. For his blood group research, Landsteiner won the 1930 Nobel Prize in physiology. In 1940, he and Alexander Wiener discovered the rhesus (Rh) factor in human blood and developed serological tests necessary to avoid Rh-mediated transfusion reactions or neonatal illness. From 1930–32, Landsteiner propagated the typhus organism in living cultures, and, remaining active after retirement, demonstrated that drug allergy is an immunological process (1935–41).