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Karl Landsteiner, born on June 14, 1868, studied at the university of Vienna and graduated in 1891. He was awarded the noble prize for physiology in medicine in 1930. He was awarded this because of his work on the classification of blood groups.
Starting from his childhood, he father was a newspaper publisher and journalist. His mother was a housewife. When Karl was 6 years old, his father died of a heart attack, so his mother and a family friend raised him. At seventeen, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he had applied for medical school. Once he was 20, he took a few years off for military service. He was a very diligent student and was recognized well by the professors. His major was Chemistry, which he had a great interest in. In 1891, earned a medical degree and graduated from the University of Vienna. After graduation, he studied all sorts of chemistry under many professors of Vienna University. His interest was still constant in medicine though, so he worked under Anton Weichselbaum, he began his work on serology (study of antigen-antibody reaction).
His research began when he wrote a paper on the influence of diet on the composition of blood ash. He had a great interest in the mechanisms of immunity and in the nature of antibodies. The next 5 years, he spent most of his time researching in laboratories all throughout Germany. He discovered many facts, such as what is responsible for syphilis and poliomyelitis. He contributed to the world the knowledge of paroxysmal haemoglobinuria (“An infrequent disorder the onset of which usually occurs in the third or fourth decades of life and is characterized by periods of hemolytic anemia, hemoglobinuria primarily at night, pallor, bronzing of the skin, moderate splenomegaly, and red blood cells that are macrocytic and vary considerably in size.” – Answers.com). He also made contributions in pathological anatomy (diagnosis of disease on the microscopic level), histology, and immunology...