Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner (1868 - 1943) Austrian biologist and physician, noted for his development of the modern system of blood group classification, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930. Together with the American physician, Alexander Wiener,  he discovered the Rh factor in 1937. He was also the discoverer of the polio virus, along with Erwin Popper in 1909. Landsteiner's father was a famous Vienna journalist who died when he was 6, which made him form a strong association with his mother, whose death mask he kept in his room till the day he died. Landsteiner moved to the USA in 1923, accepting an invitation from Simon Flexner, as economic conditions at the turn of World War I in Austria were no longer conducive to research. Landsteiner was much devoted to his work, and he is famously said to have died holding "a pipette in his hand".