The pioneering research of Paul Ehrlich, winner of the Nobel Prize, led to the development of revolutionary drugs, including the "magic bullet" against syphilis, and influenced the medical sciences, immunology and chemotherapy. He also fought against germs of another kind - the germs of anti-Semitism, was proud of his Judaism and became a Zionist
Paul Ehrlich carried out pioneering research works in chemistry, medicine, physiology, histology, bacteriology, hematology and oncology and became the founder of immunology and pharmacology and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work in immunology (1908). He invented the first effective medicine against syphilis.
Ehrlich was born in 1854 in the Silesian town of Strahlen (now Poland). He was the fourth child (and the only son) in a wealthy Jewish family. His father owned an inn and a distillery which he inherited from his father; His mother was a housewife. He was brought up according to the Jewish tradition. Paul received his secondary education at the Breslau Gymnasium. He spent the school holidays setting up a laboratory at his parents' house. He begged a well-known pharmacist to bring him chemical reagents for his experiment. The decisive role in choosing his profession was played by his mother's cousin Karl Weigert, a famous pathologist, one of the first to use aniline dyes to make microscopic preparations of different tissues in the body. For Powell, colors became the most important object and research tool. He studied medicine at the Universities of Breslau, Strasbourg and Freiburg.
From a laboratory in his father's distillery to a Nobel Prize in Medicine
In 1878, at the University of Leipzig, Ehrlich defended his doctoral thesis on the subject Towards a theory and practice of histological staining. This work was one of the results of his great interest in aniline dyes. In the same year, he became an assistant to Professor Friedrich Freiers, a well-known German clinician, in the clinic of Berlin, which gave him every opportunity to continue working on these dyes and staining tissues with them.
In 1883 Ehrlich married Hedvig Pincus, with whom they had two daughters.
In 1887 Ehrlich received the title of privat-docent at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Berlin. He later became a senior physician at the Charité Hospital in Berlin. He attended a meeting of the Berlin Physiological Society on March 24, 1882, where Robert Koch, a Nobel laureate, reported on the discovery of a bacterium that causes tuberculosis. "It was the most exciting experience of my scientific life," Ehrlich said many years later. In 1888 he contracted tuberculosis during a laboratory experiment because of his enthusiasm as a researcher and went to Egypt for treatment. The hot, dry African climate helped halt the disease's progress, and less than two years later Ehrlich returned to Germany. In 1890, Koch, the director of the new Institute for Infectious Diseases, invited Ehrlich to be one of his assistants and start immunology. In the same year he was employed as an adjunct professor at the University of Berlin.
At the end of 1896, the Royal Prussian Serum Institute was founded in Steglitz near Berlin, and Ehrlich was appointed its director. In 1899 Ehrlich became director of the new Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy in Frankfurt.
In 1908, Ehrlich won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine together with Eli Metschnikoff.
In 1910, Paul Ehrlich developed compound 606 (the number 606 showed that he succeeded after 605 unsuccessful experiments) - Salvarsan, which was effective in the treatment of syphilis and destroyed spirochetes of several tropical diseases. This work laid the foundations of chemotherapy. His medicine remained a tool for the main treatment of syphilis until the invention of penicillin. One day in 1910, Ehrlich appeared at a scientific congress in Königsberg and was received with thunderous applause. He reported how he finally found the "magic bullet" against syphilis. Ehrlich dreamed of inventing "magic pills", that is, a perfect medicine to cure a disease without the risk of side effects. "We'll learn to shoot germs with magic bullets." - Erlich liked to say.
In 1911 Ehrlich received the highest rank that the Prussian state would give "Active Secret Advisor" Wirklicher Geheimer Rat, with the predicate of Exzellenz. Ehrlich was an honorary member of more than 80 academies, an honorary doctor of five universities, the holder of many awards and medals from the chemical and medical societies of the various countries.
Paul Ehrlich was proud of his Judaism and Zionism
All his life Ehrlich showed an interest in Judaism, he was a member of Zionist societies. In 1913, when Chaim Weizmann met with Baron Edmond de Rothschild, to discuss the plans for the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Baron Weizmann insisted that he obtain "the support of some great Jewish scientists, of Paul Ehrlich, for example." Weizmann met with Ehrlich and convinced him to support the establishment of the Hebrew University. At the ceremony in 1918 at the summit of Mount Scopus, when twelve foundation stones for the university were laid, symbolizing the tribes of Israel, Weizmann stated that "the wise men of Babylon and Jerusalem, Maimonides and the genius of Vilna, the lens polisher of Amsterdam [Baruch Spinoza] and Karl Marx, Heinrich Heine and Paul Ehrlich, They are part of the links in the long and unceasing chain of development The intellectual." Ehrlich bequeathed a lot of money to the Nordau Institute, the predecessor of the Hebrew University.
Paul Ehrlich defeated the syphilis bacteria. His "magic bullet" against the germs of anti-Semitism was Zionism.
When Ehrlich was at the height of world fame, he was offered to become a noble, but he refused because he did not want to convert his religion. To this offer he replied: "I am Jewish and there is no other word. [...] We dedicated our lives to science, not to hunting for degrees". In his obituary, the London "Times" acknowledged Ehrlich's achievement in finding the new ways into the unknown, and wrote: "The whole world owes him."
More of the topic in Hayadan:More of the topic in Hayadan:
- Alex Gordon - born in Kyiv, received an education at Kyiv University, at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Ukraine and at the Haifa Technion, Doctor of Physics. Immigrated to Israel in 1979 with his wife and son.
Served in a combat unit of the IDF. Full Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Haifa and the Academic College of Education "Oranim". Author of ten books and about 900 publications in 93 journals in 17 countries in six languages: Russian, Hebrew, English, French, Ukrainian and German. The last two books were published in 2023 and 2024 by "Carmel" books.
