Paul Ehrlich

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This person was awarded a Nobel Prize
Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich
Born 14 March 1854
Strehlen, Upper Silesia, Germany
Died 20 August 1915
Bad Homburg, Germany
Nationality German
Fields Immunology
Institutions Goettingen University,
Königliches Institut für experimentelle Therapie
Alma mater Universities of Breslau, Strassburg, Leipzig
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1908)

Paul Ehrlich (14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a German doctor.[1] He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Ilya Mechnikov, for finding out how immunity fights disease.[1]

Ehrlich directed a research program which discovered the first treatment for syphilis which worked. It was a compound of arsenic which went by the trade name of Salvarsan.[2][3] He studied trypanosomiasis and other protozoal diseases. He produced trypan red, which was (as his Japanese assistant Shiga showed) effective against trypanosomes.[1]

He invented a staining system for bacteria (before Gram staining). He did a complete survey of all the cell staining techniques then known. He showed how to tell the difference between different kinds of white blood cells, and discovered mast cells. He discovered that methylene blue, which stains bacteria and cell nuclei, could put the malarial parasite, Plasmodium, into recession (the fever drops).

He also made a decisive contribution to an antiserum against diphtheria, and developed a method for standardizing therapeutic serums. His co-worker got a sole Nobel Prize for the joint work on diphtheria.[4]

References[change | change source]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Biography of Paul Ehrlich". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2009-01-05.
  2. Watson, Peter 2009. Ideas: a history, from Wittgenstein to the word wide web. London: Folio Society, p115–117. Original edition was titled A terrible beauty: the people & ideas that shaped the modern world. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.
  3. Weatherall M. 1990. In search of a cure: a history of pharmaceutical discovery. Oxford University Press.
  4. Meyers, Morton A. 2007. Happy accidents: serendipity in modern medical breakthroughs. ISBN 978-1-55970-819-7