Karl Landsteiner
Born in Austria
Year of Discovery: 1902
Superman of Science Makes Landmark Discovery - Over 1 Billion Lives Saved So Far!
Karl Landsteiner was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1868. He was essentially raised by a single mother, as his father died when he was only six. He finished medical school at age 23 and then began traveling to study under other famous scientists of the day. He often couldn't find research jobs (which were his passion) and he would make his living by doing autopsies at "deadhouses," which we call morgues today. But he always persevered and no matter what his circumstances, he would carve out a space to do research. Somewhat reclusive and pessimistic by nature, he felt at home in the laboratory and made it the focus of his life.
One of the topics he researched and found interesting was human blood. Doctors had tried giving people transfusions (a dose of another person's blood) but it was actually just pure luck if it worked. Sometimes the patient became much better and other times the patient had a fatal or deadly reaction. Before he discovered that people had different blood group types, people routinely bled to death from ulcers, accidents, and childbirth problems. No one knew that there were four different types of blood (A, B, AB, and O) and that if you gave a person the wrong type of blood, they could die from a reaction between their blood and the donor's blood. If a person receives the wrong type blood, a terrible reaction begins. This can start a chain reaction of other problems, in which the red blood cells will begin to react with the new blood cells, and then the cells will actually lyse, or fall apart, in the blood vessels. This releases hemoglobin that can damage the kidneys, which can lead to death.
In 1901, Landsteiner discovered that different people's blood had different characteristics that made it "incompatible" with other people's blood that didn't carry those same traits. He discovered the A, B, and O blood types. His discovery of the differences and identification of the groups that were alike made it possible for blood transfusions to become a routine procedure. This paved the way for many other medical procedures that we don't even think twice about today, such as surgery, blood banks, and transplants.
Landsteiner is known as the "melancholy genius" because he was so sad and intense, yet he was so systematic, thorough, and dedicated. He wrote 346 papers during his long career contributing to many areas of scientific knowledge. He is considered the father of Hematology (the study of blood), Immunology (the study of the immune system), Polio research, and Allergy research.
Landsteiner was known for his attention to detail and thoroughness. By the time he finished working on a problem, and proposing a solution, there was little room for doubt. When he turned his attention to the problem of blood incompatibility, he started with the most basic problem and designed a simple, elegant experiment to figure out why this happened. He repeated this experiment many times to rule out random error and to prove that the reaction was always present and was always the same. He then charted out all the reactions. After carefully studying this, he proposed that the agglutination (clumping) was caused by two variables - A and B. Some samples had one, some had the other, and some had none. He called the types A, B, and zero. Zero was later renamed "O". He proposed that this was what caused some blood to be compatible with others and some to react with others. Later, the AB group was discovered as someone who has both the A and B substance on their red blood cells. Today, we refer to these as the blood group antigens. This experiment laid the groundwork to establish the modern practice of blood banking.
Key Experiments or Research
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| Karl Landsteiner on Research |
The framework for Landsteiner's experiment was very logical and straightforward.
Blood has several components. It can be separated into its separate parts by letting it sit for a few hours in a tube, or the process can be speeded up by centrifuging (spinning) it. After separation, there will be the red cells at the bottom, with a layer of white blood cells and platelets on top of that, and on the very top there is a clear yellowish liquid (serum). Landsteiner tested the red cells at the bottom of one sample against the serum at the top of a different sample. He had noticed that when different people's blood were mixed together there was a phenomenon known as agglutination (clumping) that sometimes occurred. So, the clumping became his test to see if one person's blood reacted with another. He collected blood from himself and five of his fellow lab workers and separated the samples into cells and serum. Then he mixed each sample's cells, diluted with 0.6% saline (salt water), with the serum from each of the other samples until he had tested all the possible combinations. If it clumped visibly (you could see it just by looking at it with your eyes - no microscope needed) he confirmed it by looking at the sample with a microscope. He called the cells that clumped "positive" and the ones that did not "negative". After thinking about his results, he decided to make sure it wasn't just normal blood clotting - that agglutination was different than clotting. So, he found a hemophiliac (a person whose blood does not clot normally) and tested their blood. As he suspected, their blood agglutinated also with some samples and did not with others. So, this proved that the phenomenon he had noticed and studied was not just clotting - it was something different. Then he thought he should prove that the clumping he observed wasn't caused by a disease. So he tested newborn babies' cells, since they were unlikely to react due to a disease as they hadn't been in the world long enough to catch one. Finally after studying and testing blood from 22 different patients he declared, "the experiments demonstrate that my data require no correction. All 22 examined sera from healthy persons gave the reaction." He charted all his results and studied them carefully. When thinking about his results mathematically he noticed that there were probably two variables that could explain his results. He called these variables A and B. In his notebook he noted, "a remarkable regularity appeared in the behavior of the 22 blood specimens examined. If one excludes the fetal placental blood, which did not produce agglutination..., in most cases the sera could be divided into three groups: In several cases (group A) the serum reacted on the corpuscles of another group (B), but not on those of group A, whereas the A corpuscles are again influenced in the same manner by serum B. In the third group (C) the serum agglutinates the corpuscles of A and B, while the C corpuscles are not affected by sera of A and B..... In ordinary speech, it can be said that in these cases at least two different kinds of agglutinins (antibodies) are present: some in A, others in B, and both together in C."
After studying his results, he proposed that agglutination was a real phenomenon and was caused by differences between the red cells of different people. We know these today as blood types. He proposed that there were three types of blood: A, B, and C, which he later called zero and was eventually renamed O. This explainded why sometimes transfusions worked wonderfully, and at other times led to disastrous, even fatal results. He detailed his results in a paper published in 1901. It was called Ueber Agglutinationserscheinungen normalen menschilchen Blutes." (Translated this means: On agglutination phenomenon of normal human blood.)
Quotes by the Scientist
In regard to his research:
"The sera of healthy individuals not only have an agglutinating effect on animal red cells but also on human red cells from different individuals. It remains to be decided whether this phenomenon is due to individual differences or to the influence of injuries or bacterial infection."
"Since no observations whatever had been made in this direction, I selected the simplest experimental arrangements available and the material which offered the best prospects. Accordingly, my experiment consisted of causing the blood serum and erythrocytes (red blood cells) of different human subjects to react with one another."
"To exclude the assumption that perhaps past disease processes are of importance, I regarded investigations on the blood of children and animals utilizable."
"Moreover, my investigations show that the different sera do not act identically with respect to agglutination. If one believes, therefore, that they owe their agglutination ability to a kind of autoimmunization through resorption of cell constituents, then one must again assume individual differences to obtain the different sera."
To a neighbor during the war:
His neighbor, a teenage boy who had befriended him, remembered his parting words, "Finish your studies and then go out into the great big world. And if you are ever in any trouble let me know, and I'll do my best to help."
About his work situation:
"If I am asked to make do with only a microscope I have to comply."
About his living conditions in New York:
"Just imagine. I can't even play the piano I managed to lay my hands on. It was my only form of relaxation, but the neighbors complained that I made such a noise they couldn't listen to the radio. So now I never touch it."
Quotes About the Scientist
"At 21 years of age he had already known that which had impressed me so much...that important discoveries will emerge when one scientific discipline merges with another."
-Phil Levine, a colleague
"The line of least resistance was to embark on efforts to discover new bacteria, now that the methods of cultivation of bacteria were laid down by the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch. Those who took the line of least resistance did discover the pneumococcus, meningococcus..., but what else did they contribute to the medical sciences?"
-Phil Levine
"Now I found myself face to face with a tall, very slim, good-looking young man with brown hair and eyes, a moustache, and a rather sensual mouth. His movements were brisk, yet graceful. We had a brief conversation, in the course of which I was impressed by his extraordinary attraction and by his burning enthusiasm for research-work, despite the unpretentious modesty with which he spoke of it."
-Constantin Levaditi, a professor at the Institute Pasteur in Paris, met Landsteiner a little after this time and provided this sensitive description of him.
"He formulated precisely the relationships between cause and effect, and did not complicate what was still unknown by hypotheses. When he did introduce hypotheses, they were supported scientifically by experiments. He never claimed more than he was able to prove scientifically or could verify by his own experiments."
-Dr. Paul Speiser, his Austrian biographer
"Landsteiner had a mind that was by nature sharp-edged and rigorous, delighting in the exact. He read the higher mathematics for diversion, amused himself with problems in advanced algebra and calculus, and followed with zest each forward step in the new mathematical physics."
-Rous, a colleague
"Landsteiner's work dispelled any notion that might have once been held that there is absolute specificity in immune relations. Indeed, the structures of the many cross-reacting molecules uncovered in work from his laboratory were used to great advantage to illuminate how a ligand's [any molecule that binds to another] shape, size, and charge distribution affects the extent to which it is recognized by antibodies."
-Herman Eisen of MIT
"For many years I had had no news of Landsteiner at all; but during a study-tour of America in 1929 I ran him to earth in his laboratory. I found him rather depressed and full of complaints about his work, especially about the regulations that apart from restricting his activities in certain fields bore no relation at all to the virtually unlimited scope of his own scientific ambitions."
-Long-time associate Constantin Levaditi, related after a visit to Landsteiner in New York
Anecdotes
A Classic Work-a-holic
Adriano Sturli, one of the doctors who donated blood for Landsteiner's blood group experiment, told an amusing story about Landsteiner: "Towards the end of 1901 I was asked by Landsteiner, with whom I had up to then only done some histological and bacteriological studies, whether I would like to join him in some serological studies and experiments (these would lead to the discovery of the fourth blood group AB). I agreed with alacrity, and thus had an opportunity of repeating all his experiments to his explicit satisfaction. I should add that the final studies started on the afternoon of 31 December 1901 and went on without a break until 8:30 PM. The two of us were quite alone in the Pathological Institute, now silent and deserted. These hours were a sort of tragicomedy for me, because I had naturally been itching for hours to join my friends and see the New Year in in style. However, Landsteiner was gently but firmly insistent, and kept me washing blood-corpuscles, mixing sera, centrifuging, saturating charcoal-powder with dyes, etc. under his supervision, with results that seemed to me amazing but to Landsteiner were self-evident. Eventually we took leave of one another, tired but still good friends, with a cordial ‘Happy New Year'."
But Not All Work and No Play
He would bring his beloved dog, Waldi, to work and let him sit under his desk. Around lunch time every day Waldi would start barking and Landsteiner would playfully reprimand him, "Waldi, you've not an atom of respect for science."
Patience is a Virtue
Not that Landsteiner was always dire. He still relished his lab, never losing his wit while there. The young scientists in his charge often rushed to conclusions. One day he said, "Is it not strange that I, who have so little time left, should be teaching patience to you, who have your life before you?"
Humble to the End.
One evening in 1930 Philip Levine went to Landsteiner's apartment. He found the family placidly reading as usual. Levine was quite surprised, considering the news of the day. "What news?" Landsteiner's wife and son asked. Their looks told the story. Karl had told neither Helene nor Ernst what he had learned earlier that day, that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Beginning in 1923, fourteen different nominators had put him up for the award for three different discoveries - his polio research, his immune system work, and his discovery of the blood groups. After 29 years, the committee finally granted him the award for his blood group work.
source: www.scienceheroes.com
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