Karl Landsteiner was a medical researcher and Nobel laureate. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1935.

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650 items

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Presented by the Landsteiner family and accessioned, 1958 (1958 1622ms).

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Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

When Karl Landsteiner left Vienna in 1922 at the age of fifty-four to join the Rockefeller Institute, he had already done much of his most important work. In the early years of the century he had discovered a simple technique of agglutination, whereby human blood was divided into four groups, a discovery that made possible safe blood transfusions. This work, in turn, led him to the study of hereditary differences in antigens of blood groups, and thus to the birth of serological genetics. A succession of discoveries followed in the 1920s and 1930s, after he had moved to the Rockefeller Institute: the discovery of blood factors (M, N, P, and Rh factors), and investigations on the chemical specificity of serological reactions, which became a basis of immunochemistry. Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930. After Landsteiner's death, George M. Mackenzie began collecting materials for a biography: correspondence with friends and associates of Landsteiner, memoranda of conversations, notes and recollections of Landsteiner by Thomas M. Rivers (1944-1952) and by Max Neuberger, annual reports from Landsteiner's laboratory at the Institute (1923-1943), correspondence on publications and the Nobel Prize, and raw material on immunology and the study of blood. These materials comprise the Landsteiner Collection (the biography was never completed). Of special interest are records on medical education in Vienna, the growth of anti-Semitism, and correspondence with Simon Flexner which led to Landsteiner's move to the Institute. The collection is eclectic and contains large gaps (many scribbled notes), but it is useful as a supplemental background source on Landsteiner. The collection is complemented by the Landsteiner correspondence in the Simon Flexner Papers (B F365), which contains administrative and scientific material on Landsteiner's laboratory. There is also substantial material on Landsteiner in the Peyton Rous Papers (B R77).

• Rockefeller Institute

• Landsteiner, Karl, 1868-1943
• Mackenzie, George M.,collector
• Neuburger, Max
• Rivers, Thomas M. (Thomas Milton), 1888-1962

• Antisemitism.
• Blood.
• Immunology
• Medical colleges -- Austria -- Vienna.
• Medical sciences.