The present Doodle commends the 138th birthday celebration of Polish inventor, doctor, and immunologist Rudolf Weigl. He created the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus—one of humanity’s oldest and most infectious diseases.
On this day in 1883, Rudolf Stefan Weigl was brought into the world in the Austro-Hungarian town of Przerów (current Czech Republic). He study biological sciences at Poland’s Lwów University and was designated as a parasitologist in the Polish Army in 1914. As millions across Eastern Europe were plagued by typhus, not really set in stone to stop its spread.
Body lice were known to convey the typhus-infecting bacteria Rickettsia prowazekii, so Weigl adjusted the minuscule creepy crawly into a laboratory specimen. His innovative research uncovered how to utilize lice to propagate the deadly bacteria which he read for quite a long time with the expectation of developing a vaccine.
In 1936, Weigl’s vaccine successfully inoculated its first recipient. At the point when Germany involved Poland during the outbreak of the Second World War, Weigl had to open an vaccine production plant. He utilized the office to recruit friends and colleagues in danger of persecution under the new system.
An expected 5,000 individuals were saved because of Weigl’s work during this period- – both because of his immediate endeavors to ensure his neighbors and to the huge number of vaccine dosages disseminated across the country. Today, Weigl is broadly commended as an exceptional researcher and legend. His work has been respected by not one but rather two Nobel Prize nominations!
From studying a tiny louse to saving great many living souls, the effects your tireless work had on the world are felt right up ’til the present time—Happy Birthday, Rudolf Weigl!