Alexander Solomon Wiener

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Alexander Solomon Wiener (born March 16, 1907 in Brooklyn , New York City , New York , † November 6, 1976 in New York) was an American serologist . Together with Karl Landsteiner, he discovered the Rhesus factor in 1937 .

Life

Alexander Solomon Wiener was the son of George Wiener, a lawyer who immigrated from Russia in 1903 , and his wife Mollie (Zuckerman) Wiener. He went to school in Brooklyn and graduated from high school when he was 15 . Although he was a gifted mathematician and received a scholarship to study mathematics at Cornell University , he turned to biology and received a bachelor's degree in the subject in 1926 . He then studied medicine at Long Island College of Medicine and earned his MD in 1930 .

He was already doing blood typing research at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital during his medical school - he remained associated with the facility throughout his professional life. There he was an assistant doctor from 1930 to 1932 and from 1933 to 1935 as head of the department for genetics and biometrics and headed the department for blood transfusions until 1952 . Since 1932 he had his own practice and in 1935 founded the “Vienna Laboratory for Clinical Pathology and Blood Grouping ”. In 1938 he became a member of the forensic medicine department at New York University School of Medicine , where he was professor from 1968 . He worked with the New York City Coroner's Office since the 1930s . In 1932 Wiener married Gertrude Rodman, with whom he had two daughters. In 1946 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research and in 1975 the William Allan Award . In 1970 Alexander Wiener was elected a member of the Leopoldina . He died of leukemia on November 6, 1976 in New York .

Important contributions in the field of hematology

The "blood fingerprint"

Wiener began working with Landsteiner at the age of 23, shortly after starting work at the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn. At the beginning of the collaboration, they were primarily concerned with the M-factor, which they found out actually consists of five different factors.

This encouraged them in their endeavors to create a "blood fingerprint", i. H. a unique blood profile that could be used in litigation and criminal cases. Wiener pioneered the type of blood test that is commonplace today in the DNA age. In addition to his work in his laboratory in Brooklyn, Wiener also did considerable work in a laboratory in Manhattan , where he focused on forensics and assisted the police in numerous investigations through blood analyzes of suspects or of the traces they left behind .

Many articles and chapters in crime stories dealt with Wiener's work as a criminologist. Together with his father, lawyer George Wiener, he helped draft new laws that took into account the latest scientific advances in blood identification. He was a member of the legal committee of the American Medical Association , which supported blood testing laws in all US states, and co-authored his 1935 report. He also served as a consultant in many paternity cases.

Rhesus factor

When Wiener and Landsteiner discovered the rhesus factor in 1937, they did not immediately recognize its importance. It was only viewed as a further factor, not very different from the factors M, N or P, that is, useful for the “fingerprint”, but without any further meaning. But Wiener soon found out that the newly discovered blood factor had something to do with blood transfusion problems. Although there is no harm in the first transfer of Rh-positive blood to a recipient with Rh-negative blood, antibodies are generated that make a second blood transfer very dangerous.

At the time of Wiener's and Landsteiner's publication in 1940, Wiener was able to show that Rh allergy is the cause of hemolytic reactions between the groups.

In parallel with Philip Levine's independent work that helped identify the rhesus factor as the main cause of neonatorial haemolytic disease , Wiener was able to remedy a main cause of child mortality. His method, which he called blood exchange transfusion , consisted of a complete exchange of the affected baby's blood. There are less extreme methods of treating the disease now, at the time it saved over 200,000 lives.

Nomenclature and Genetics

In his later work, Wiener was concerned with the study of the genetics of the rhesus factor. It was here that he became involved in controversy because of an alternative theory - the CDE nomenclature by Robert Russell Race and Ronald Aylmer Fisher - which was a little easier to understand.

Wiener's theory is that Rhesus factor inheritance is controlled as follows: There is a Rh gene locus that has a Rh gene, but that gene has multiple alleles . For example, a gene Rh1 produces an agglutinogen Rh1, which consists of the three factors rh ', Rh (o) and hr' '. The three factors correspond to C, D and e in the CDE system, respectively. The d gene does not exist in Wiener's theory, and it has actually been proven that it does not exist at all. In fact, it has recently been shown that there are two genes linked together, one of which has multiple expressions, as Wiener suggested. Though he was wrong in suspecting it was only one gene, the principle that a single gene can have multiple alleles has proven true, a revolutionary idea at the time.

Fonts

  • with Irving B. Wexler: The inheritance of blood groups. Thieme, Stuttgart 1960.
  • with Irving B. Wexler: Erythroblastosis foetalis and blood exchange. Thieme, Stuttgart 1950.
  • Rh-Hr-Syllabus, The types and their application. Thieme, Stuttgart 1955.
  • Rh-Syllabus, From the serological laboratory of the head of the New York City Health Service and the blood transfusion center of the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn NY Thieme, Stuttgart 1949.

literature

  • Addine G. Erskine: The Principles and Practices of Blood Grouping. 1978, ISBN 0-8016-1531-3 .
  • Pauline MH Mazumdar: Species and Specificity: An Interpretation of the History of Immunology. Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-43172-7 .
  • David R. Zimmerman: Rh: The Intimate History of a Disease and Its Conquest. Macmillan 1973, ISBN 0-02-633530-1 .
  • Edward Radin: Twelve Against Crime. 1951 Especially Chapter 8, "Master of Invisible Clues."

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wiener, Alexander Solomon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American serologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City , United States
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1976
Place of death New York , United States