Morten Simonsen

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Morten Simonsen (born March 31, 1921 in Copenhagen , † 2002 ) was a Danish immunologist, professor at the University of Copenhagen . He is one of the discoverers of the graft-versus-host reaction .

Simonsen graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1947 with a medical degree, where he received his doctorate in 1953. He then worked as an assistant at the Pathological Institute, where he became a university professor in London and Paris after a stay abroad in 1954. In 1953 he received his doctorate with a thesis on kidney transplantation in dogs, in which he demonstrated graft-versus-host reaction (GVHR), which was described in France in 1959 by Georges Mathé in bone marrow transplants. Simonsen also investigated the phenomenon when cells from a chicken were injected into a chicken embryo in 1957. Later he carried out further experiments, mostly with special mouse strains, which allowed more controlled experimental conditions. In the late 1950s he was a harsh critic of Frank Macfarlane Burnet's clone selection theory , which he believed to be contrary to his experiments.

Because of his research he was appointed by the University of Copenhagen in 1957 as head of a newly established institute for transplantation and immunobiology. When the establishment was delayed, he went to England in 1961 as head of transplant research at the McIndoe Memorial Research Unit in East Grinstead . In 1963 he also became an Honorary Research Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of England .

After the establishment of the institute in Copenhagen took shape, he returned in 1967 and became professor and director of the Institute for Experimental Immunology at the University of Copenhagen. He continued to deal with the GVHR and developed new tests for it.

In 1975 he received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize , and in 1959 the Pfizer Award. In 1965 he became a member of the Danish Academy of Sciences. From 1968 to 1972 he was chairman of the Danish Society for Allergology and Immunology. He was also politically active in the left spectrum, for example when the Socialist People's Party was founded.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary G. Möller, Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, Volume 56, 2002, p. 543
personal data
SURNAME Simonsen, Morten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish immunologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen
DATE OF DEATH 2002