Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer

Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer ( born March 27, 1858 in Zduny, Posen Province, † September 15, 1945 in Bad Landeck, Lower Silesia ) was a German bacteriologist and hygienist.

Life

Pfeiffer studied medicine at Medicinisch - surgical Friedrich- Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and received his doctorate in 1880 for Dr. med. Subsequently, he was until 1889 a medical officer in the Prussian army. From 1887 to 1891 an assistant to Robert Koch, he habilitated in 1891 at the Charité in Berlin. As the successor of Erwin von Esmarch in 1899, he was appointed to the Chair of Hygiene at the Albertus University of Königsberg. In 1909 he moved to the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau. For the academic year 1919/20, he was elected its rector. He was retired in 1925 and incorporated into the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 1927.

For bacteriology, he made numerous fundamental contributions: With Carl Fraenkel he took Koch's teachings in a floor plan of the bacteria customer together. He first described the bacteriolysis. In 1892 he discovered the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae and 1896 Micrococcus catarrhalis. He was also one of the discoverers of vaccinations against typhoid. On several expeditions abroad, he examined the plague in India ( together with the heads of the expedition Georg Gaffky and Robert Koch, the internist and disease researcher Georg Sticker, and the bacteriologist Adolf Dieudonné ) and malaria in Italy. Pfeiffer first described the endotoxins and their effects.