Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine (15 March 1860, Odessa, Russian Empire - 26 October, 1930, Lausanne, Switzerland) was a bacteriologist who worked in India. He was the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. Lord Joseph Lister named him "a saviour of humanity".
Born Vladimir Aaronovich Havkin (Russian: Владимир Ааронович Хавкин), the fourth of five children in a f...
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Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine (15 March 1860, Odessa, Russian Empire - 26 October, 1930, Lausanne, Switzerland) was a bacteriologist who worked in India. He was the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. Lord Joseph Lister named him "a saviour of humanity".
Born Vladimir Aaronovich Havkin (Russian: Владимир Ааронович Хавкин), the fourth of five children in a family of a Jewish schoolmaster in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), he received his education in Odessa, Berdyansk and St. Petersburg.
For a short time, young Haffkine was a member of Narodnaya Volya, but after the group turned to terrorism against public officials, he broke up with the revolutionary movement. He was also a member of the Jewish League for Self-Defense. Haffkine was injured while defending a Jewish home during a pogrom. As a result of this action he was arrested but later released due to the intervention of Ilya Mechnikov....
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