Philip Levine (medical doctor)

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Philip Levine (born August 10, 1900 in Kletsk near Minsk , † October 18, 1987 in New York ) was an American immunologist and hematologist , whose clinical research brought about knowledge of the Rh factor , the hemolytic disease in newborns ( Morbus haemoliticus neonatorum ) and expanded the blood transfusion .

Live and act

Levine was born the sixth of seven children to a Jewish family in Belarus. The family suffered from anti-Semitism in what was then Russia and emigrated to the USA in 1908, changed their name to Levine and settled in Brooklyn. There Philip graduated from high school in 1916 and earned his bachelor's degree from City College , New York , in 1919 after four months of military service that ended in the armistice . He then enrolled at Cornell University's medical school in Ithaca , New York , where he graduated after three years. Already here his main interest was directed to the blood groups. After graduation, he received a three-year scholarship for allergy research under the allergist Arthur Fernandez Coca (1875-1960), the founder of the Journal of Immunology, with Levine mainly concerned with the newly discovered Prausnitz-Küstner experiment and after the publication of his Results Obtained a master's degree in 1925 .

In 1925 Levine became Karl Landsteiner's assistant at the Rockefeller Institute , New York, and Levine later described the work with Landsteiner as defining his own scientific methodology. Together, the two researchers discovered in 1927 the antigens M and N as the basis for the second most important blood group system besides the AB0 system , namely the MNS system . By 1929 Landsteiner and Levine had succeeded in differentiating 72 phenotypes of red blood cells in humans based on their serological reactions with the antigens.

When Levine left New York in 1932, he agreed with Landsteiner not to do any further research on blood types. Instead, he spent the next three years at the University of Wisconsin – Madison doing research on bacteriophages . It is thanks to his work that a law was passed in Wisconsin that allowed the courts to order blood tests in paternity disputes.

From 1935 Levine worked as a bacteriologist and serologist at Newark Beth Israel Hospital in New Jersey , where he focused on research on blood transfusions and published important research results in 1939 together with Rufus E. Stetson: The two researchers had been working on a stillborn baby in 1937 that had died of disease haemoliticus newborn and they stood for the first time found that a mother's blood group - antibodies may develop due to the immune response to the red blood cells of her fetus .

Awards

Extract from the full list in the Giblett publication pp. 335f.

estate

In 1969 the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) created an award for clinical research named after Levine, the Philip Levine Award . The German Society for Transfusion Medicine and Immunohematology awards a Philip Levine Prize to “innovative scientists” in immunohematology and its border areas.

See also

literature

  • Eloise R. Giblett: Philip Levine (1900-1987), A Biographical Memoir , National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC 1994 PDF
  • Levine P and Stetson RE: Intra-group agglutination. J Am Med Assoc, 113: 126, 1939

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IN MEMORIAM PHILIP LEVINE , on dgti.de, accessed on November 25, 2019
  2. ↑ List of the ASCPPhilipLevineAwardforOutstandingResearch ( Memento of September 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Prices Philip Levine Prize , on dgti.de; accessed on November 25, 2019

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Levine, Philip
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American immunologist and hematologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Kletsk near Minsk
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1987
Place of death new York