Rudolf Weigl was a Polish scientist, doctor, and inventor who developed the first successful typhus immunization. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine every year from 1930 to 1934, as well as from 1936 to 1939.
Rudolf Weigl’s Biography, Wiki and Quick Facts
| Full Name: | Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl |
|---|---|
| Born Date: | 02 Sep, 1883 |
| Age: | 73 years at the time of his death |
| Horoscope: | Virgo |
| Lucky Number: | 4 |
| Lucky Stone: | Sapphire |
| Lucky Color: | Green |
| Best Match for Marriage: | Taurus, Capricorn |
| Death Date: | August 11, 1957 |
| Gender: | Male |
| Profession: | Biologist |
| Country: | Poland |
| Marital Status: | married |
| Wife | Zofia Weigl |
| Net Worth | $1 Million |
| Eye Color | Black |
| Hair Color | Black |
| Birth Place | Prerau, Austria-Hungary |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Education | Lwów University |
| Mother | Elisabeth Kroesel |
| Wiki | Rudolf Weigl Wiki |
Rudolf Weigl – Net Worth | How rich was rudolf?
Rudolf Weigl was a dedicated and successful Polish biologist. Throughout his career, he had made a good living. At the time of his death, he had a net worth of $1 million.
Early Childhood and Education of Rudolf Weigl | What was Rudolf Birthdate? How did he died? Family and Ethnicity Details of Rudolf
Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl was born on September 2, 1883, in Prerau, Austria-Hungary. His father was killed in a bicycling accident while he was a child. His mother, Elisabeth Kroesel, married Józef Trojnar, a Polish secondary school teacher. Weigl was raised in Jaso, Poland. Despite being a native German speaker, he adopted Polish culture and language after his family relocated to Poland.
The family afterwards moved to Lviv.Weigl graduated from Lwów University’s biology department in 1907, having studied under Professors Benedykt Dybowski (1833-1930) and J. Nusbaum-Hilarowicz (1859-1917). After graduating, Weigl served as Nusbaum’s assistant, and in 1913 he completed his habilitation, thus giving him tenure. He later received doctorates in histology, comparative anatomy, and zoology.
Career and Professional Life of Rudolf Weigl
Weigl began researching the origins of typhus after enlisting in the Austro-Hungarian army’s medical service following the outbreak of World War I in 1914. From 1918 until 1920, Weigl oversaw the Laboratory for the Study of Spotted Typhus at a military hospital in Przemyl. In 1919, he was elected to the Polish army’s military sanitary council. When he began conducting research and experiments, he developed a vaccination.
After Germany conquered Poland in 1939, Weigl continued to study and work at a facility in Lwów. He was able to increase the yield of his typhus vaccine there. Rudolf spent the next four years in Lwów developing a spotted fever vaccine. He directed and led the Institute for Typhus and Virus Research in Lwów. Weigl created a spotted fever vaccine that reduced symptoms but did not totally protect against the sickness.
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When the Nazis conquered Poland during World War II, they became interested in Weigl’s studies. When they conquered Lwów, he was told to set up a typhus vaccine manufacturing facility at his Institute. Weigl enlisted the help of several Jewish friends and coworkers to build the facility. Weigl hired and sheltered around 2,000 Polish intellectuals, Jews, and underground members. Then he hired many of these people to assist him with his typhus research and lice experiments.
Many of his Jewish friends mostly helped with the lice growth in exchange for food, safety, and vaccine doses once they were ready. His vaccines were hidden in the ghettos of Lwów and Warsaw, as well as other concentration camps and Gestapo cells. During the Nazi regime, Weigl was credited with saving nearly 5,000 lives.
Rudolf Weigl – Vaccine Development
In 1930, Weigl discovered a method for producing a typhus vaccine by culturing infected lice and smashing them into a vaccine paste. He was inspired by Charles Nicolle’s finding in 1909 that lice were the vector of epidemic typhus, as well as work on a vaccine for the similarly related Rocky Mountain spotted fever. He discovered that lice stomachs infected with Rickettsia prowazeki, the bacterium responsible for typhus in humans, could be utilized to develop a vaccine.
In 1918, he began working on the first version of the vaccine and began testing it on rodents and even healthy human volunteers. He developed this process over time, and in 1933, he conducted considerable research to create bacteria and experiment with lice utilizing a micro-infection strategy. The procedure was divided into four major steps:
- Growing healthy lice for around 12 days.
- Giving them typhus injections.
- Continuing to grow lice for an additional 5 days.
- Removing the midguts of the lice and making a paste out of them (this was the vaccination).
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The more human the blood, the better for lice growth. His method was first tested on guinea pigs. However, in 1933, he began extensive human experimentation, feeding the lice human blood by allowing them to suck human legs through a screen. Typhus might develop later in the process if the lice are contaminated. Also he overcame this problem by administering “injected” vaccines to humans, which effectively stopped them from dying (though some did get the sickness). Weigl and his wife Zofia Weigl were among the first lice feeders. He got sick, but he recovered.
Between 1936 and 1943, Belgian missionaries serving in China used his vaccine for the first time. Vaccinations were quickly distributed throughout Africa. But the vaccine proved difficult to mass produce and dangerous to create. Other vaccinations that were less damaging but more expensive to make were developed over time, such as the Cox vaccine derived from egg yolk.
Achievements for Rudolf Weigl
Weigl was nominated for the Nobel Prize on a yearly basis from 1930 to 1934 and 1936 to 1939. Despite these nominations, he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for vaccine research or social work.
Many people admired Weigl’s research, effort, and dedication even 50 years after his death. In 2003, he was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Israel bestowed this distinction on him in recognition of his efforts to preserve several Jewish lives during World War II. On September 2, 2021, Weigl’s 138th birthday, Google will recognize him with a Google Doodle.
Personal Life | Wife and Family Details of Scientist Rudolf Weigl
Following the war’s border adjustments, Weigl relocated to Kraków in southern Poland. He was appointed chair of the General Microbiology Institute at Jagiellonian University. Later, he was appointed chair of biology in the medical department at the University of Pozna. Despite the fact that he retired in 1951, his vaccination was still produced for several years.
He was also a married man. He was married to Zofia Weigl in 1921. However, there is no specific information available about their wedding or married life.
On August 11, 1957, at the age of 73, Weigl died in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane. Although he was buried in Kraków’s venerable Rakowicki Cemetery. For his typhus research and work, the typhus research department at Lwów University established the Weigl’s Institute. Andrzej Uawski’s 1971 film The Third Part of the Night offers the institute a lot of screen time.
Body Measurements and Social Media
Rudolf was not on any social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Throughout his life, he never used these social media platforms.
Similarly, information regarding his height, weight, dress size, shoe size, and so on is unavailable. However, based on his photographs, we can assume he had black eyes and black hair. He sported a beard.
