Alexander S. Wiener

Alexander Solomon Wiener ( born March 16, 1907 in Brooklyn, New York, USA, † November 7, 1976 in New York) was an American Serologe. He discovered in 1937 along with Karl Landsteiner the Rhesus factor. In 1946 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, the 1975 William Allan Award.

Life

Alexander Solomon Wiener was the son of George Wiener, a lawyer who had immigrated from Russia in 1903 and his wife Mollie ( Zuckerman ) Wiener. He went to school in Brooklyn and made with 15 years of his high school graduation. Although he was a gifted mathematician and received a scholarship to study mathematics at Cornell University, he turned to biology and received in 1926 a Bachelor degree in this subject. He then studied medicine at Long Iceland College of Medicine and acquired in 1930 the MD title.

During his medical studies he studied at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn already with blood group research. He also was associated from 1930 to 1932 assistant physician and remained his entire professional life with the facility. He worked there from 1933 to 1935 as head of the Department of Genetics and Biometrics and directed until 1952, the Department of blood transfusion. Since 1932, he ran his own practice in 1935 and founded the Wiener Laboratory for Clinical Pathology and blood group determination. In 1938 he became a member of the department of forensic medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, where he was professor from 1968. Since the 1930s, he worked with the office of coroner of New York City. 1932 married Gertrude Rodman Vienna, with whom he had two daughters. He died on November 6, 1976 in New York from leukemia.

Important contributions to the field of hematology

The " blood - fingerprint"

Wiener began his collaboration with Landsteiner age of 23, shortly after he had begun his work at the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn. At the start of co-operation they were mainly concerned with the M- factor, from which they found out that it actually consists of five different factors.

This encouraged them in their efforts to create a " blood - fingerprint", ie a unique blood profile that could be used in litigation and in criminal cases. Wiener was a pioneer in the type of blood test that is in the DNA era commonplace today. In addition to his work in his laboratory in Brooklyn, made ​​Vienna also considerable work in a laboratory in Manhattan, where he focused on forensics and police supported by blood tests of suspects in numerous investigations.

Many articles and chapters in crime stories dealt with Wiener's work as a criminologist. Together with his father, the lawyer George Vienna he helped with the drafting of new laws, which took into account the latest scientific advances in the identification of blood. He was a member of the legal committee of the American Medical Association, the blood test laws supported in all U.S. states and he was co-author of its report in the year 1935. Too many processes paternity, he worked as a consultant.

Rh factor

As Wiener and Landsteiner in 1937 discovered the Rhesus factor, they did not recognize immediately its meaning. It has been viewed simply as another factor, not very much different from the factors M, N or P, that is useful for the " fingerprint", but without any further meaning. But soon found out Vienna that the newly discovered blood factor had to do with problems in blood transfusion. Although in the first transfer of Rh - positive blood no damage occurs to a recipient with Rh - negative blood, antibodies are produced that make a second blood transfusion very dangerous.

At the time of Wiener and Landsteiner published in 1940 showed that the Rh sensitization is to be regarded as a cause of hemolytic reactions between the groups in Vienna.

Parallel to Philip Levine's independent work, which helped to identify the Rh factor as the main cause of hemolytic disease of the newborn, Vienna could resolve a major cause of child mortality. His method, which he called exchange transfusion, consisted in a complete replacement of the affected baby of blood. Although there are less extreme ways of treating the disease today, were saved at that time more than 200,000 lives.

Nomenclature and genetics

In his later work was concerned with the Vienna study the genetics of the Rhesus factor. Here he was involved in a controversy, because there is an alternative theory - the CDE nomenclature of Robert Russell Race and Ronald Aylmer Fisher was, which was a little easier to understand.

Wiener's theory is that the inheritance of the rhesus factor is controlled as follows: There is a Rh - Rh gene locus in which a gene occurs, but this gene has multiple alleles. For example, produces a gene Rh1 one agglutinogen Rh1, consisting of the three factors ": . 'Consists rh ', Rh ( o), and hr ' The three factors correspond respectively C, D and E in the CDE system The d gene. exist in Wieners theory does not, and it's actually been proven that it does not exist. it has been proved even in recent times, that there are two genes interconnected, one of which multiple forms, like Wiener suspected. Though he wrong was when he suspected that it was only a gene, so has the principle that a single gene can have multiple alleles found to be true, a revolutionary idea at the time.

Works

• With Wexler, Irving B.: The inheritance of blood groups; Thieme, Stuttgart 1960
• With Wexler, Irving B.: erythroblastosis foetalis and blood exchange; Thieme, Stuttgart 1950
• Rh -Hr Syllabus, The types and their application; Thieme, Stuttgart 1955
• Rh - Syllabus, from the serological laboratory of the Chief of the Health Service of the City of New York and the blood transfusion center of the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn NY; Thieme, Stuttgart 1949