Jules Bordet

Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet ( born June 13, 1870 in Soignies, Belgium, † April 6, 1961 in Brussels, Belgium) was a Belgian biologist; he specialized in immunology and bacteriology. For his discoveries in the field of immunity, he received the 1919 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The bacterium Bordetella pertussis is named after him.

Life

Bordet received his doctorate in 1892 as a doctor of medicine in 1894 and then began his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. There he described in the laboratory of Elie Metchnikoff phagocytosis of bacteria by white blood cells. In 1898, he told the caused by the addition of foreign blood serum hemolysis. From 1901 he worked at the Pasteur Institute near Brussels.

In 1899 he married Marthe Levoz. The marriage produced a son and two daughters were born.

In 1900 he left Paris to found the Pasteur Institute in Brussels, and found that non-specific serum components reinforce the initial specific antigen -antibody reaction in vivo and transform it into a more effective defense mechanism. He called these components alexines. Today they are known as the complement system. The thus discovered the process of binding of antigen on the one hand and complement products on the other hand was the basis of Komplementbindungsreaktions laboratory tests ( CFT tests). Thus, serological tests for syphilis were possible. August Specifically developed by Wassermann test named after him. With the same test (CFT ) techniques to diagnose countless other diseases today. With Octave Gengou in 1906 he isolated Bordetella pertussis in pure culture and postulated it as the cause of whooping cough.

In 1907 he became professor of bacteriology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 1940 he retired, his son Paul Bordet became his successor at the Pasteur Institute.

Bordet was a Freemason and a member of the Masonic lodge Les Amis Philanthropes No. 2 in Brussels.

Awards

The Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1919 he was awarded for his discoveries in the field of immunology. Bordet was awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Cambridge, Paris, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Edinburgh, Nancy, Quebec, case, Montpellier, Cairo and Athens. In addition, he was a member of the Royal Society, Académie nationale de Médecine (Paris), National Academy of Sciences (USA) and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.