Hirszfeld Ludwik (05/08/1884, Warsaw – 07/03/1954, Wrocław) - physician, microbiologist, immunologist, serologist.
He was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw. However, he graduated from a high school in Łódź and went to study medicine in Germany. He studied in Würzburg and Berlin, obtaining a doctoral degree with the highest distinction.
In 1907–1911, he worked at the Heidelberg Institute for Experimental Cancer Research. Together with Emil von Dungern, they developed the foundations of the science regarding blood groups. In 1911, he began work at the Institute of Food Safety and Hygiene, University of Zurich, where he obtained his postdoctoral degree at the age of thirty.
During World War I, he was in Serbia. There, he participated in the fight against the typhus epidemic, for which he was awarded honorary citizenship by the king of Serbia.
In 1920, he returned to Poland and, in 1926, he again obtained a postdoctoral degree, this time at the University of Warsaw. In 1931, he became a full professor there. Together with his wife Hanna, they made a discovery that gave rise to seroanthropology and for which, in the 1950s, he was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Prague and Zurich.
Hirszfeld was in charge of the Warsaw Institute of Serum Testing and co-founded the National Institute of Hygiene. In addition, he was a co-editor of Medycyna Doświadczalna i Społeczna (Experimental and Social Medicine) and a co-founder of the Warszawskie Czaspismo Lekarskie (Warsaw Medical Journal). He contributed significantly to the establishment of the Polish Biological Society and the Polish Society of Microbiologists.
Hirszfeld converted to Catholicism. However, after the outbreak of World War II, in accordance with the Nuremberg laws, he was considered a "non-Aryan" and was relocated to the Warsaw ghetto. He lived next to the Church of All Saints on Plac Grzybowski.
In the ghetto, Hirszfeld was involved in the treatment of typhus. He headed the Health Council of the Warsaw Judenrat and also conducted active pedagogical activity, lecturing in Sanitary Preparation to Fight Epidemics and Clinical Training for 4th and 5th Year Medical Students. He also founded the Medical Society and wrote a thesis on typhus in the ghetto.
In July 1942, he managed to get out of the ghetto to the “Aryan side”. He was helped by Fr. Prelate Marceli Godlewski. Hirszfeld hid, in Polish homes, under assumed names. At that time, his autobiography, Historia jednego życia [The History of One Life] (1946, reissues 1957, 1967, 1989, 2000, 2011) was written, which was a form of protest against nationalism and racism, against subordinating science to criminal totalitarian rule. Shortly after leaving the ghetto, his only daughter Maria died of pneumonia.
In 1944, Hirszfeld was in Lublin, where he participated in establishing the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University. After the end of the war, he moved to Wrocław. He began work in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Wrocław and, later, became the faculty’s dean. He founded the Wrocław Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN – Polska Akademia Nauk). He also founded the Pregnancy Pathology Research Centre.
Hirszfeld laid the foundations for the science of blood groups. He introduced the labelling of the Rh factor in Poland and discovered the cause of serological conflict.
In 1954, in Wrocław, he died suddenly of a heart attack.
After the Second World War, Hirszfeld held numerous scientific and social positions, among others he was a member of the Presidium of the Scientific Council at the Ministry of Health, a full member of the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences, a member of the Committee of the Second Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences and of its Committee of Medical Sciences, as well as of numerous medical organizations in Poland and abroad.
He was actively involved in various peace initiatives, participating in international congresses devoted to this issue and participated in the work of the Committee for the Defenders of Peace. He condemned the use of science for ideological purposes.
For his scientific and educational work, he received a number of foreign decorations and awards, including the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the 1st Degree State Prize in 1951.
Bibliography:
- Borzymińska Z., Hirszfeld Ludwik, [in:] Polski Słownik Judaistyczny, editors Z. Borzymińska, R. Żebrowski, vol. 2, Warsaw 2003
- Fedorowski G., Ludwik Hirszfeld, Warsaw 1985.
- Hirszfeld L., Historia jednego życia, Warsaw 1946.
