Heinz Seeliger

Heinz Paul Richard Seeliger (born  November 1, 1920 in Warmbrunn ; †  April 10, 1997 in Würzburg ) was a German hygienist , bacteriologist and mycologist . He worked from 1965 to 1989 as professor and director of the Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology at the University of Würzburg , and was particularly concerned with listeriosis , the diagnosis of bacterial intestinal diseases and medical mycology . In recognition of his work, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class , and accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie nationale de Médecine .

Life

Heinz Seeliger was 1920 in Cieplice born and completed during the Second World War, a study of medicine at the University of Wroclaw and at the University of Leipzig , where he is first with Notexamen and the promotion leukemic on "About phenomena in blood and bone marrow tumors of the hematopoietic apparatus ”. He passed the full medical examination in Frankfurt am Main in 1947 . From 1946 to 1950 he worked in the central laboratory of the US armed forces in Heidelberg, first as a research assistant and then as an employee, among other things in bacteriological food testing, and thus gained access to the then current hygienic specialist literature. From 1948 he dealt intensively with the epidemiological works of Walther Kruse , the "old master of Ruhr research ".

In 1950 he became an assistant at the Hygiene Institute at the University of Bonn under Hermann Eyer . There he completed his habilitation in 1955 with a thesis on "Experimental investigations for mycological serodiagnostics". At the beginning of the 1960s he mainly worked in Hamburg, where he worked with Ralf Rohde. In 1963 he was appointed professor and institute director for hygiene and microbiology at the University of Würzburg , where he then worked from 1965 to 1989. He died in 1997 in Würzburg .

Scientific work

During his time in Bonn, Heinz PR Seeliger initially dealt with the epidemiology and laboratory diagnostics of bacterial dysentery , especially the Shiga-Kruse bacterial dysentery in Europe, and with the differentiation of enterobacteria , especially salmonella , as well as the diagnosis and epidemiology of listeriosis . In 1951 he described the first disease with listeriosis in an adult in Germany at the Bonn University Institute for Hygiene. Thanks to the Salmonella factor sera produced there, the laboratory he ran was recognized as a Salmonella reference laboratory by the Federal Health Office in 1952 . After moving to Würzburg, he pioneered the medical mycology as well as the taxonomy and nomenclature of bacteria. He is considered a co-founder of serological diagnostics in the field of mycology.

From 1971 to 1975 Heinz Seeliger served as Vice President of the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology and from 1978 to 1982 as President of the International Union of Microbiological Societies. In 1991 he published an autobiographical treatise in the Würzburg medical history reports entitled “50 Years of Experienced Microbiology and Hygiene” .

Awards and recognition

Heinz Seeliger received the gold Ernst Rodenwaldt Medal in 1975, the Johann Lucas Schönlein Plaque of the German-speaking Mycological Society in 1985 , the Ferdinand Cohn Medal of the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology in 1991 and the Gold Purkinje Medal in 1993 of the Medical Faculty of the University of Brno . In 1989 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class .

In addition, he was a corresponding member of the Paris Académie nationale de Médecine and an honorary member of various scientific societies, including the Société Française de Microbiologie and the Société Française de Mycologie Médicale, the German-speaking Mycological Society, the American Society for Microbiology and the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology. He has been named honorary editor of the Mycoses magazine .

Named after him are the Heinz PR Seeliger Prize, which is awarded by the Heinz PR Seeliger Foundation, founded by his widow, to outstanding microbiologists in the fields of listeriosis research, medical mycology and research on intestinal infections , as well as the species Listeria seeligeri from the Genus of the Listeria .

Publications (selection)

• Mycological serodiagnosis. Leipzig 1958
• Creation and prevention of microbial food infections and poisoning. Paderborn 1971
• Aspergillosis serology. Series: Best Practices in Microbiology. Lfg. 12. Stuttgart 1975
• Chemotherapy of surface, organ and systemic mycoses. Erlangen 1982
• Paperback of Medical Bacteriology: Involving Viruses, Protozoa, and Fungi. Munich and Baltimore 1978
• with Therese Heymer: Diagnosis of pathogenic fungi in humans and their environment: textbook and atlas. Stuttgart and New York 1981
• Medical microbiology: laboratory diagnostics and clinic. Munich and Baltimore 1990

literature

• Jochen Bockemühl, Peter Emmerling: Obituary for Heinz PR Seeliger. In: LaboratoriumsMedizin. 21 (9 )/1997. Blackwell Wissenschafts-Verlag, p. 500, ISSN  1439-0477
• Johannes Müller: Obituary: Heinz PR Seeliger 1920–1997. In: Mycoses. 41 (S1) / 1998. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 13/14, ISSN  0933-7407

Further publications

• Heinz PR Seeliger: 100 years chair for hygiene in Würzburg. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 6, 1988, pp. 129-138.
• Heinz PR Seeliger: 50 years of experience in microbiology and hygiene. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 9, 1991, pp. 207-216 (autobiographical memories).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürgen Potel: Memories of Heinz Paul Richard Seeliger. In: Würzburger medical history reports 17, 1998, p. 551 f .; here: p. 552
2. ↑ Ferdinand Cohn Medal - German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology eV ( Memento of the original from August 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.