Michael Heidelberger
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Michael Heidelberger | |
---|---|
American | |
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Known for | Properties of antibody |
Spouses | Nina Tachau
(m. 1916; died 1946)Charlotte Rosen
(m. 1956; died 1988) |
Awards | New York University School of Medicine |
Doctoral advisor | Marston T. Bogert |
Michael Heidelberger
Early life
Heidelberger was born in 1888 in New York City to a Jewish couple, David and Fannie Campe Heidelberger, a traveling salesman and a homemaker respectively. An older brother had died shortly after birth; a younger brother, Charles,[5] was born 21 months after Michael. His paternal grandfather, also named Michael, was a German Jew who had emigrated to the United States in the early 1840s.[6]
Heidelberger's father had only an elementary school education, and was on the road for six months out of the year selling window curtains. It fell to Heidelberger's mother to take charge of the household and of Michael's education. She had attended a private girls' school in Norfolk, Virginia, and after graduation had stayed with relatives in Germany for a year. Until Michael was twelve, she taught him and his younger brother at home. They attended classical concerts, had to speak German at the table, and were taught French by a nanny during outings to nearby Central Park. Later in life he came to appreciate his early training in languages that were central to scientific discourse during the first half of the twentieth century.
Heidelberger decided at age eight that he wanted to be a chemist, for reasons he could never quite articulate or recall, but which he later judged no more than a "pigheaded idea". He experimented at home by mixing medicines and the very basic ingredients included in children's chemistry sets of the time, until he began his formal training in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry at the
Heidelberger loved music and started playing the clarinet in the high school orchestra. Heidelberger was talented enough that concert musicians encouraged him to consider a professional career in music. Instead, it became his "chief relaxation." He played the same two handmade wood instruments, a B flat and an A clarinet, all of his life, taking them with him wherever he went to join in chamber music performances at conferences or at the homes of friends.
Education and early research career
When Heidelberger entered
Urged on by his parents, Heidelberger after graduation with his Ph.D. arranged for a visit with his former family physician,
Heidelberger took their advice and in 1911 went to
While visiting relatives in Germany on his return from Zürich, Heidelberger received a telegram from his father relating an offer of a position of Fellow of the Rockefeller Institute, conditional upon a personal interview and approval by the institute's director, Simon Flexner.
Rockefeller Institute
Heidelberger passed muster, and in September 1912 began working in
In the summer of 1915, after attending officer training camp in Plattsburgh, New York, for a proposed volunteer army (an outgrowth of the movement to prepare the United States for entry into World War I) and earning a commendation as a marksman, Heidelberger traveled to Lake Kezar in Maine for a vacation. After performing Pergolese's Nina there, his piano accompanist exclaimed, "meet Nina," and in walked a young lady, Nina Tachau. They were married in 1916 to the strains of a wedding march composed by Heidelberger. She was a writer and activist for the New York chapter of the League of Women Voters and, during the 1940s, for the American Association for the United Nations. After her death from cancer in 1946, Heidelberger continued her work on behalf of the United Nations, and was a member of the U.S. delegation to meetings of the World Federation of United Nations Organizations in Prague, Bangkok, and other cities. He met his second wife Charlotte Rosen at a concert. She was the violist in a Mozart trio in which Heidelberger performed. They married in 1956. For ten years prior to her death in 1988, he took care of her at home while she suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
After the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Heidelberger was commissioned in the Sanitary Corps and assigned to the Rockefeller Institute. He continued to work with Jacobs, a collaboration that lasted more than nine years and produced 44 papers. They synthesized many chemotherapeutical drugs, namely aromatic arsenicals, for the treatment for infectious diseases, in particular
In 1921 Heidelberger transferred to the laboratory of Donald D. Van Slyke at the Rockefeller hospital, where he spent the next two years developing a method for preparing large quantities of purified
During this time Heidelberger was approached by the bacteriologist Oswald Avery to help him elucidate the chemistry of the "specific soluble substance" Avery and Alphonse R. Dochez had found in the spherical capsule that envelops pneumococcus and many other species of bacteria. In 1923, Heidelberger and Avery reported that this capsular substance, which determined the specific type of pneumococcus and, with it, its virulence, consisted of polysaccharides, carbohydrate molecules made up of more than three monosaccharide units. Their discovery for the first time established a relationship between chemical constitution and immunological specificity of antigens, thereby putting the field of immunology on a firm biochemical footing. It also disproved prevailing assumptions among scientists that only proteins could act as antigens.
Heidelberger devoted the rest of his career largely to pursuing the consequences of his and Avery's seminal discovery. He identified and analyzed the structure of different pneumococcal polysaccharides—over one hundred have since been found—as well as of other microorganisms, and studied their role in immune reactions. In 1927 he left the Rockefeller Institute to become head of the chemical laboratory at
Columbia University
His role as consulting chemist in its department of medicine suited his generous temperament. The door to his office, which he likened to "42nd Street and Broadway" because of its traffic, was open for anyone, especially junior researchers, to stop by, discuss matters of science or politics, and seek his advice. During his 27 years there he used his unique knowledge of polysaccharide antigen chemistry to develop methods, in particular the precipitin reaction, for isolating pure antibodies, which he proved were protein and which he measured in absolute units of weight for the first time.
He and his collaborators Forrest E. Kendall (1899–1987)[7] and Elvin A. Kabat formulated a quantitative theory of precipitin and other immune reactions, which showed that such reactions unfolded in three distinct stages and which posited that antigens and antibodies were bi-or multivalent, meaning that they could combine in varying proportions. These findings enabled Heidelberger to develop a much more potent antiserum to meningitis in infants, as well as a simple but effective vaccine against several forms of pneumonia, which was successfully tested among Army Air Force recruits in 1944.
Later life
Upon his retirement from Columbia in 1954, Heidelberger moved to the Institute of Microbiology at
Heidelberger received fifteen honorary degrees and 46 medals, citations, and awards for his work, including two Albert Lasker Awards in 1953 and 1978, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1977, the National Medal of Science from President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, and the Bronze Medal of the City of Paris in 1964. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the New York Academy of Medicine,[9] as well as an officer of the Légion d'honneur of France. He served twice as president of the American Association of Immunologists, in 1947 and 1949. Both times his presidential addresses urged scientists to resist nuclear armament and restrictions on free exchanges among scientists across national boundaries imposed in the name of national loyalty and security. He was also a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[10][11] He published a scientific paper in every decade of the 20th century.[8] Each year, Columbia University hosts a lecture in honor of Heidelberger and Elvin A. Kabat, his first[12] PhD student.
Notes
- S2CID 46518538.
- ^ "The Michael Heidelberger Papers – Biographical Information". Profiles in Science. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2008-05-09.
- ^ "Michael Heidelberger, 103, Dies". The Washington Post. 1991-06-28. Retrieved 2022-05-15.
He became known as the father of modern immunology.
- ^ "Michael Heidelberger Papers 1901–1990 (bulk 1940–1975)". National Library of Medicine.
- PMID 334035. Retrieved 2013-05-30.
- ^ "1850 United States Census", United States census, 1850; Northern Liberties Ward 6, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; roll M432_811, page 414A, line 1. Retrieved on 2013-5-30.Heidelberger had a daughter born in Philadelphia in 1843.
- ^ "Obituary. Forrest E. Kendall". The New York Times. July 26, 1987. p. 26, Section 1.
- ^ a b "Heidelberger-Kabat Lecture". Columbia University, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
- ^ "Michael Heidelberger". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
- ^ "Michael Heidelberger". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
- PMID 334035.
External links
- Eisen, H. N. Michael Heidelberger, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
- The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
- Michael Heidelberger Papers (1901–1990) – National Library of Medicine finding aid
- The Michael Heidelberger Papers – Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine
- Heidelberger-Kabat Lecture at Columbia University