Tag: immunology
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Questioning immunology and the soul
Vani GhaiPune, India The long and tiring battle with COVID has stimulated modern medicine to investigate new approaches to understanding the science of immunity. It has long been apparent that immune systems exist almost ubiquitously across the living and that all diseases involve the immune system. But even though immunology plays a decisive role in…
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Karl Landsteiner and the discovery of blood groups
Safia BenaissaMostganem, Algeria Karl Landsteiner was the Austrian scientist who recognized that humans had different blood groups and made it possible for physicians to transfuse blood safely. He entered medical school at the University of Vienna, where he developed an interest in chemistry. After taking off a year to complete his military service he returned…
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Anne McLaren, transfusion, transplantation, and the nature of blood
Matthew HolmesCambridge, UK Anne McLaren, Oxford-trained zoologist and first female Officer of the Royal Society, once claimed that “History may be circular, but the history of science is helical: it repeats itself, but each time at a deeper level.”1 To see the helical nature of the history of science in action, we need look no…
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Grandfather of allergy: Dr. Bill Frankland, the ardent centenarian
John Turner United Kingdom Captain A. W. Frankland Image credit Paul Watkins Research for Far East Prisoners of War History Group Fepowhistory.com “For your final choice?” Dr. William Frankland at one hundred and three, the oldest guest ever to appear in the London studio of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, chose Elgar’s Nimrod in…
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The early days of the Nobel Prize and Golden Age of Microbiology
Juan–Carlos ArgüellesMurcia, Spain Introduction According to Alfred Nobel’s (1833–1896) last will and testament, signed on November 27, 1895, the largest share of his fortune would be dedicated to a series of awards bestowed on those people who deserved great merit for their intensive work in favor of mankind. That year the Nobel Prize was born,…