Karl Landsteiner (June 14, 1868 – June 26, 1943), was an Austrian biologist and physician. He is noted for his development in 1901 of the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood, and in 1930 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. With Alexander S. Wiener, he identified the Rh factor in 1937. Landsteiner and Erwin Popper discovered the poliovirus in 1909. H...
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Karl Landsteiner (June 14, 1868 – June 26, 1943), was an Austrian biologist and physician. He is noted for his development in 1901 of the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood, and in 1930 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. With Alexander S. Wiener, he identified the Rh factor in 1937. Landsteiner and Erwin Popper discovered the poliovirus in 1909. He was awarded a Lasker Award in 1946 posthumously.
Landsteiner’s father Leopold (1818 - 1875), a renowned Vienna journalist, died at age 56, when Karl was 6. This led to a close relationship between Landsteiner and his mother Fanny (née Hess), (1837–1908). He kept her death mask all his life in his bedroom. After graduating with the Matura exam from a Vienna secondary school he took up the studies of medicine at the University of Vienna and wrote his doctoral thesis in 1891. While still a student he published an essay on the influence of diets...
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