Max Theiler
Max Theiler (born January 30, 1899 in Pretoria , South Africa , † August 11, 1972 in New Haven , Connecticut , USA ) was a South African-American bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner of Swiss origin.
Life
The son of the Swiss-South African veterinarian Arnold Theiler delivered essential work on the pathogens of infectious diseases . He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for his development of a yellow fever vaccine . In 1949 he had received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research .
Theiler studied medicine at the University of Cape Town , St. Thomas Hospital in London and the London School of Tropical Medicine. In 1922 he received his MD and went to the USA to the Harvard Medical School . From 1930 he was at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, where he stayed for the remainder of his career and headed the virus laboratory.
Theiler dealt in particular with yellow fever and showed that it was not caused by the bacterium Leptospira icteroides (the causative agent of Weil's disease ), as was still partially suspected in the 1920s. After Adrian Stokes showed that yellow fever could be induced in rhesus monkeys, Theiler made another step forward: he showed that the virus causes meningitis in mice. If the pathogen is then passed on to monkeys again, it triggers yellow fever in a weakened form, which also gives monkeys immunity to the deadly form of yellow fever. This knowledge formed the basis for the vaccine development by Theiler and Hugh Smith ( 17 D vaccine, 1937). In the 1940s, the Rockefeller Institute manufactured large quantities of the vaccine.
The lunar crater Theiler is named after him.
Fonts (selection)
- Viral and Rickettsial Infections of Man. 1948.
- Yellow fever. 1951
literature
- Renate Wagner: Theiler, Max. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1384.
Web links
- Hubert Steinke : Max Theiler. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1951 award ceremony for Max Theiler (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Theiler, Max |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | South African-American bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner of Swiss origin |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 30, 1899 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pretoria , South Africa |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 11, 1972 |
| Place of death | New Haven , Connecticut , USA |