Albert Coons

Albert Hewett Coons ( born June 28, 1912 in Gloversville, New York, † September 30, 1978 in Brookline, Massachusetts) was an American physician ( pathology, immunology ). He was the first to immunofluorescence techniques developed in the 1940s and anwandte.

Coons studied at Williams College in Williamstown (Massachusetts ) with a bachelor 's degree in 1933, and at Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated with an MD was followed by residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital ( Residency ), which a Fellowship in Bacteriology and Immunology Thorndike Memorial Laboratory at the local joined with Hans Zinsser. 1939 came to him during a stay in Berlin an der Charité the idea detect antigens by marked with fluorescent molecules specific antibodies. Upon his return to Boston, he conducted research thereon, said he developed the chemical techniques with the organic chemist Louis Fieser and tested for antibodies to pneumococci, which he anhängte the fluorescent molecules anthracene isocyanate. The antibodies retained their effect and led to the flocculation of the pneumococcus, which was now visible under UV light in the microscope.

Coons developed after the techniques of immunofluorescence (immunohistochemistry ) on. He was by military service as a pathologist and laboratory director in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in the Pacific War from 1946 as a scientist at Harvard, where he was instructor in 1947. In 1953 he Career Investigator of the American Heart Association and at the same time a visiting professor at Harvard was. In 1970 he became a professor in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, Harvard Medical School, from 1971 in the Department of Pathology.

He was president of the Histochemistry Society and in the years 1960/1961 the American Association of Immunologists, as well as several honorary doctorate. In 1959 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the 1961 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, a 1962 Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Passano Award and the 1966 Emil von Behring Prize. In 1962 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.