Transplanting blood from one person to another has become a very easy task in this age when heart transplants and brain transplants are all possible. But the greatest milestone in the world of medicine was the discovery of the first type of human blood and its systematic injection into the next person’s body! That milestone was achieved by biologist Karl Landsteiner.
Landsteiner was born on June 14, 1868 in Vienna, the capital of Austria. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna. Later, he also studied chemistry as he did research in the field of biochemistry. After that he worked as a professor at the University of Vienna for a long time.
In 1900, Landsteiner was amazed to find that when blood from two different people was mixed, some blood types coagulated and some blood types did not! The question of how this was possible kept nagging at his mind. To find it, he was doing research in the laboratory without proper food and sleep. In that research, together with Alexander S. Weiner, Landsteiner discovered the ‘Rh Factor’, which helps distinguish between ‘O’ positive, ‘O’ negative and ‘B’ positive blood types.
He then not only discovered the system of blood types but also gave two unique rules known as ‘Landsteiner’s Laws’. His discovery led to the first successful blood transfusion in New York. For this, Karl Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1930.
Apart from this, Karl Landsteiner, who made various contributions to the fields of anatomy, histology, and immunology, died on June 26, 1943, at the age of 75. He died of a heart attack while working in his laboratory in New York City.
When mixing the blood of two different people, he was surprised to see that some blood types coagulate and some blood types do not coagulate..!