Lise Meitner - a great female scientist .. guest post

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was the Vienna-born daughter of a large Jew­ish family. Because girls weren’t allowed tertiary education, the family gave Lise a private tutor at 14. She entered the Uni of Vienna in 1901, study­ing physics under Ludwig Boltzmann. Later she received her doct­or­ate in 1906, only the second woman to receive one from Vienna Uni.

She left for Berlin in 1907 with family support, to attend Dr Max Planck’s lectures and to do rad­io-activity research with chemist Dr Otto Hahn. After a year, she became his Hahn’s as­s­istant and worked with him, wanted to discover isotopes. In 1913 phys­ic­ist Meitner and chemist Hahn collaborated at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin.   

Drs Meitner and Hahn in their laboratory, 1913

German History Intersections

 

Meitner supported the Austrian army as a medical X-ray technician ­in WWI, returning to Berlin in 1917 when she and Hahn disc­ov­ered the radioactive chemical el­em­ent pro­tact­in­ium. Meitner was awarded the 1917 Leibniz Medal.

Having isolated the is­o­t­ope prot­ac­t­inium, Meitner and Hahn stud­ied nuclear is­omerism and beta decay. In 1926 she became the fir­st female Professor of Physics in Ger­many, heading up the Phys­ics Dept at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Research at the time was theoretical, but many scientists knew about the honour of the Nobel Prize waiting for the winner who dis­covered it. She worked with Hahn for 30 years, collaborating cl­osely, st­udying radio­activity, with her physics skills and his chemistry skills.

In the 1930s with the German physical chemist Dr Fritz Strass­mann, she inv­estigated neutron bombardment of uranium. Strassmann was not Jewish but he refused to join the Nazi Party, so both their res­earch efforts were interr­upt­ed as the Nazis gained power. She stayed in Germany longer than most because of her Austrian citizen­ship, but because she was Jew­ish, her physicist friends had to help sneak her over the border when Austria was annexed by Germ­any in 1938. Then she worked in Sweden at the Nob­el Institute for Exper­imental Physics, then continued her laborat­ory work at Stock­holm’s Manne Siegbahn Instit­ute, developing a working relationship with Niels Bohr.

Physicist Dr Otto Frisch (1904–79) was the Austrian-born first cousin of Lise Meit­ner. He first measured the magnetic moment of the proton and together they advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fis­sion and first detected the fission by-products.

While working together, Otto Frisch and Lise Meitner received the news that Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had discovered that the collision of a neutron with a uranium nucleus produced the element barium as one of its by-products. Frisch and Meitner both hypothesised that the uranium nucleus had split in two, coining the term nuc­l­ear fission to describe the proc­ess. After Hahn and Strassmann showed that barium appeared in neutron-bombarded uran­ium, it was Meitner and Frisch who explain­ed the ph­ys­ical charact­eristics of this division.

L->R Niels Bohr, Werner Heisen­berg, Wolfgang Pauli, Otto Stern, Meitner, Rudolf Ladenburg and ?

conference in 1937, Wiki

In Feb 1939, Meit­ner published the physical expl­an­ation for the ob­serv­ations. Meitner, Frisch and colleag­ues found that uranium atoms split when bombarded with neutrons, rel­easing a large amount of energy. Nuc­l­ear fission process was later used in nuclear power plants and bombs.

Hahn had isol­ated evidence for nuclear fission, but Meitner and Frisch were the first to clarify how the process occ­urred. Yet in 1944 Hahn al­one re­ceived the Chemistry Nobel Prize regarding nuc­lear fis­sion, giv­en that he ignored Meitner’s research af­ter she left Ger­many. He should have argued that Meitner merited the Nobel Prize as well.

After WW2 Meitner continued working in Sweden, then travelled and lect­ured across the USA. Her recognition of the explosive potent­ial of the process was what motivated Dr Albert Eins­tein to cont­act Pres Roosevelt, lead­ing to the establishment of the Manhattan Project. She was then in­vited to work on the Project at Los Alamo but Meitner opp­os­ed the atomic bomb and refused to work there at all.

On a visit to the U.S in 1946 she was welcomed by her siblings, and given total Americ­an press celeb­rity treatment, including being named Woman of the Year by the Women's National Press Club, DC. She had dinner with Pres Harry Truman who mistak­en­ly thought that she worked on the atomic bomb but Lise Meitner refused to work on a bomb.

Her Swedish colleagues planned to get her a proper position. In 1947, Meitner moved to Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology to establish a new facility for atomic research, with researchers to help. Appropriately she received in the Max Planck Medal, honouring her old mentor in Berlin.

Lise Meitner, Life in Physics,

(California Studies in the History of Science,

by Ruth Lewin Sime, 1997, Amazon

But the Nobel nastiness wasn’t even partly rect­if­ied until 1966, when Hahn, Meitner and Strassman won the En­rico Fermi Award, for their joint re­search that led to the discovery of uran­ium fis­sion. What a long wait!

The physicist who never lost her human­ity died in Camb­ridge in Oct 1968. In 1992, element 109 was named Meitnerium in her honour. Like many others, I believe she was the most significant woman scientist of the 20th century!

By Dr Joe

Melbourne 

#30plus: great MIRC channel 1993-2023

#Israel was the very first IRC channel that both Daniel ben Sefer-Dabas Sydney and Helen Webberley-Heloise Melb­ourne had been involved in. We met many fine people who remained close friends, especially Muet, Mer, Academy, Winky, Andygee and Peteyc. The experience in ear­ly 1993 was novel, challenging and fun. But eventually the fun palled. The problems were twofold:

RACISM was by far the nastiest problem Dabas and Heloise had ever dealt with. The channel became open slather for every lunatic fringe element who had a gripe against Jews:
1. Nazis planning to rebuild Hitler's gas chambers.
2. Christian fundamentalists raided the channel less often, concerned with allocating blame for the death of Christ.
3. Islamic militants intent on destroying the Jewish state.

JUVENILITY Given that the average age of #Israel was 19.2 years, and that 80% was male, their favourite top­ics were army life, university subjects and finding a weekend date.

As with any testosterone-charged channel, kicking, banning and op wars were common. Part of this frenetic activity was a survival strategy to do with the constant invasion of Neo Nazis and militant Islamists. But part of it was just machismo. Suggestions we­re made about opening up the discussion topics to things ADULTS we­re inter­ested in eg literature or music. But this ended in uproar every time.

 

Dabas, Heloise and Skeve met to start the channel
Sydney Harbour Bridge
22nd Oct 1993.

Helen was going to Sydney one weekend in Oct 1993, and so Dabas (beard) and his friend Skeve (cap) arranged to meet up for lunch along the Sydney Harbour foreshore. It was a hot day, and by the end of the second icy beer, Heloise was telling them about irc problems. Dabas asked why we did not start our own channel, and pat­ien­t­ly ex­plained that he could do the technical stuff if I could est­ab­lish the ground rules for new members, no racism, anti Semitism, sexism or adolescents; a channel that would maintain the beloved Israeli connections and Australian values.

As we had hoped in #Israel, the discussions would be expanded to topics mature adults were interested in eg travel, music, literature, philosophy, world politics, careers, family relationships and sport. Op wars and kick bans would become a bad memory from the past.

Both we believed that all the Anglo Saxon, acad­em­ic, middle aged friends from #Israel would want to join us. Dab­as, Winky, Ac­ademy, Muet and Heloise were all: over 40, Jewish and acad­emics, so the channel could be #40academic or #40married or #40Jewish.

When I logged on the first night in the Sydney hotel room, Dab­as quickly messaged: "Come into #30plus: I HAVE CAPTURED A REAL LIVE CHANNEL MEMBER". This was poor man called Runaway whose wife had left home and had taken their children with her. He just wanted suppor­tive adult company during the crisis. And so #30plus was born, the name being suggested by Skeve as more inclusive and less excl­us­ive than #40academic. But neither of us knew what we were doing. We did not even know how to keep the channel open 24 hours a day, so took it in 8 hour shifts to be there, around the clock!

During those first days, me3, pdq, joshtree, bigjoe, toots, gazza, sirlunar, dugip, zurbaran, amarin, sna, tinytim, ruach, edu, drKB, kimba, shor, beamer, fluffy, fuzed, friskykid, capt-peril, oldbear, panache, nurse, redgum, sulu, kate, lone, bish, hotsailor, flaccus, thalia, mfp, melsy, cty, fauna, wabbit and peppr came into the channel, and stayed. Joshtree in Finland set up the twin bots, Castor and Pollux, so the founders could finally get some sleep.

The channel name started to appear in computer magazines and on radio as an interesting and non violent place to be. We were both interviewed by journalists in Australia and elsewhere, and people popped in saying "I saw you in Article X in New Zealand (or wherever)". Lisabee, nutnhoney, daisee, rossma, birdbrain, prism, belladona, annette and others joined by late 1993.

Where did the first organised meetings of #30plus members take place? The channel was Australian based, but as can be discovered from the early photos, the first reunion was in Boston (Jan 1994) and the next was in Canberra (Apr 1994).

Boston reunion, Jan 1994

It was thought from the beginning that the channel was really easiest for Anglophones or people who could type and read English in a very busy channel. In fact two thirds of the channel regul­ars lived in the USA, while the others were mainly Australasian, British, South Afric­an and Canadian. Channel members were full of admiration for the Isr­aelis and Europeans who added a breadth to the channel, using English as their second lang­uage.

An early collective tasks of this new, adult-friendly channel was to collect lists of peo­ples' favourite books. People took hours, going along their libr­ary shelves, reminding themselves of books they had not read since the 1960s. The lists were diverse, but always fas­cin­ating. The level of convers­ation and of email letters was very high.

A San Francisco reunion weekend,  July 1994

Life was never going to be quite the same again. Pdq suggested nom­inating Dabas and myself for the Nobel Peace Prize, given that they had revolutionised IRC and made it a pleasant place for adults to be. Australia had produced yet another really worthwhile contribution.

**
Three significant events in late 2018 changed #30plus. Firstly the Australian Trade Mark Registrat­ion ended in Aug 2018 and was not ext­ended so #30plus had no more intell­ec­tual property protect­ion. Then #30plus started in Oct 1993 and was thus celebrating its 25th bir­th­day. While this was a huge ach­iev­ement in the MIRC world, a new generation of channel members was mov­ing in; the older members spent their spare time looking for ret­ire­ment villages. Third­ly I ret­ired from lecturing when Covid start­ed and no longer benefited from tax deduct­ibility and printing costs.

The channel of course continued strongly. But I have repeated this post because in late 2023 a long-time U.S channel member called on-line for all Jews to be exterm­in­ated. The Australian police couldn’t help us and my most beloved US friends, Fluffy and Oldbear, died some time ago.

J Edgar Hoover's Gospel: illegal, oppressive

J Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) was born in Washington DC in a religious family. Devout since boyhood, he loved being a Sunday School teacher and prided himself on his Scriptural knowledge. Before his father was ill, and it became necessary for him to choose higher-paying em­pl­oy­ment, young Hoov­er had intended on becoming a Christian min­is­t­er. Instead he studied law and worked in the Dept of Justice.

J Edgar Hoover, 1932

History Today

 

In 1919 young Hoover worked in the Justice Dept's Rad­ical Division, gathering data on radical political organisations. His sur­veil­lance system came by creating a data­base of all American rad­icals. After the 1920 Wall St bomb, anarch­ists and comm­un­ists were located via Hoov­er’s system and questioned, since Hoover believed that the bombing was directed by Russian forces.

The Washington Post (Sept 1920) desc­ribed the Wall St bombing as ex­emplifying the extent to which the alien scum from the sew­ers of the Old World had polluted the clear spring of American demo­c­­racy. The Dept of Justice launched raids, round­ing up thousands of lef­t­ists and deporting many out of the US. The D.O.J charged young Hoo­v­er with investigating the attack, along with the N.Y Police Dep­art­ment. The nasty repress­ion of imm­ig­rants led to the civil libert­ies movement; American Civil Liberties Union was formed in 1920 to add­ress this government crackdown on free speech & political act­ivism

In 1924 at 29, Hoover was appointed as FBI Director. As America’s top cop, he turned the FBI into a blend of a Sunday School, private-members club and white supr­em­acist clique. He demoted all non-white special ag­en­ts, as well as most Jews, and made Christ­ianity part of FBI train­ing and social events. In contrast to the anti-Cath­olic sentim­ent in US society, Hoover resp­ected Cat­hol­icism for its theological rig­our. He welcomed Cathol­ic­ism to the FBI, instig­ating an annual FBI mass.

Hoover believed the U.S was God’s chosen nation. Director from 1924-72, Hoover thought the Bureau’s miss­ion was to defeat the godless forces of liberalism, women’s rights, civil rights, radical cl­ergy, students, anti-war prot­es­tors and particularly gay men. To ov­er­come these foes, America had to yield to his pref­erred Christ­ianity i.e unerr­ingly conservative, patriotic and white.

Dr Lerone Martin is Director of the Martin Luther King Jr Res­earch and Education Institute and Prof of Religious Studies at Stan­ford Uni­versity. Martin’s book Gospel of J Edgar Hoover (2023) sh­owed how the FBI director, infamous for persecuting Martin Luther King, worked system­atically to champion his own religion. Using newly decl­as­s­­ified FBI documents, Martin desc­rib­ed how Hoover bent the cul­t­ure of the FBI, and collaborated with fam­ous evangelicals and Catholics to try to es­tab­lish his Christian Amer­ica. Together they fuelled the polit­ical rise of white Christian nat­ion­alism, with vast consequences for electoral pol­it­ics, views of nat­ional security and role of race and religion in US ident­ity.

Hoover had an fanatic hatred of Albert Einstein because he was Je­w­ish, foreign and left wing. Einstein got to the USA in 1933 and in­volved himself with racial justice, was against lyn­ching and for qu­al­ity black educ­at­ional institutions. Einstein befriended Paul Rob­eson, Hoov­er’s MOST despised human being. Hoover wanted to have Einstein deported!

Einstein and actor Paul Robeson (right) 

Washington Post

After WW2, Hoover launched a public relations campaign outside the Bureau eg his popular essays in the conservative magazine Christian­ity Today dealt with theological and patriotic concerns. Pre-em­inent  Cath­olic ­evang­elists Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham prais­ed FBI!

Martin reported that during 1956-71 Hoover sanctioned 2,000+ ill­eg­al dir­ect actions targ­eting domestic civ­ic organisations he'd hated. Some of his religious operations were both unconst­itutional and biz­arre eg when he investigated one word in a new Bible trans­la­t­ion. This commun­ist plot und­ermined U.S Christ­ianity, Hoover said!

Regarding Hoover’s flagrant ab­use of the Separation of Church and St­ate, the details Martin published were based on the ex­haus­tive use of arch­ives. But the FBI were still unsym­p­athetic to Mart­in’s project in 2020, so he had to sue the Bureau for not resp­ond­ing to a Free­dom of Information request. Even then, Martin wrote, the Bur­eau did not admit to break­ing any law.

Some of Hoover’s later issues
The Nobel Prize Committee cited philosopher Albert Cam­us’ pers­is­tent efforts to illuminate the problem of human consc­ience! It was largely as a champion of philosophical moral truth that Camus was hon­oured in 1957 and is still admired today. Hoov­er was furious that he couldn’t stop Camus receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Re John Lennon, Hoover wrote to HR Halde­mann, Pres Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff indicating the high pr­iority the Lennon case had for Nixon; Lennon had been inter­est­ed in extreme British left-wing act­iv­ities and was a sym­p­ath­is­er of communists there. It’s telling that Hoover died in May 1972 and a memo was sent from the FBI’s Acting Director Patrick Gray say­ing the FBI was ending its surveill­an­ce of Lennon. In any case Nixon was easily re-elected in Nov, and the Imm­ig­­rat­ion Service and FBI succeeded in pressuring Lennon to withdraw from anti-war activ­ity. How strange then that Lennon still received Immigration and Naturalisation Service dep­ort­­ation not­ic­es. So imm­ig­r­at­ion lawyer Leon Wild­es sued Att Gen John Mitchell and ot­h­ers for their cons­piratorial attempts to throw Lenn­on out of the country. Their investigation turned up documents from Hoover to HR Hald­e­man, inform­ing him of the FBI’s progress.

When politicians advocated for stricter gun laws

J Edgar Hoover tests a gun, opposing gun controls

The Nation

In May 1970 chaos at Kent State Ohio shocked Uni off­icials who bel­ieved outside agit­at­ors were responsible. Kent's mayor de­­c­lared a state of emergency, appealing to Ohio Governor James Rhod­es to send in the Ohio National Guard. How was Edgar Hoover involved?

Conclusion
Hoover’s influence on the FBI remained. The Bur­eau had been too slow to combat the security threat posed by white Chr­ist­ian nationalists, a group concerned with violent, terrorist att­acks, incl­uding the 6th Jan 2021 killings. White Christian nat­ion­al­ism and the FBI’s inertia were part of Hoover’s legacy, from a man who bel­ieved he and his religion were above the law. Hoover was work­ing for God, not for the Constitution or Americans.

"Top Cop, Bad Cop" by Daniel Rey, History Today July 2023; "Ringleader" by Adam Hochschild The Nation , March 2023; and "Hoover's War on Gays" by Douglas M. Charles, UP Kansas 2015 are well worth reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Einstein (1917-55): Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, UK, USA

Albert and his first wife Mileva

German-born Albert Einstein (1879-1955) became the world’s most fam­ous physicist. I briefly examined his early life and first wife Mil­eva Marić (1875–1948) whom he married in Zurich in 1903. In 1905 he published his vital scientific papers that made him famous. By 1908, he was rec­ognised as a lead­ing scientist at Bern Uni, completing his work on the general theory of relativity.

In 1917, as director of the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Ph­ysics in Berlin, Einstein re-took German citizenship. Meanwhile the publication of experimental evid­ence supporting his general relat­iv­ity theory made huge impacts in acad­eme. After their 1919 divorce, Mileva took their two sons to Zurich, so Albert could immediately marry his wife-cousin Elsa and adopt her children.

Einstein first visited New York in 1921 where he was offic­ially welcomed by organiser Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organisation. This was followed by weeks of lectures and re­c­eptions at Columbia and Princeton Un­i­v­ers­ities, and at the Nat­ional Academy of Scien­ce.

How did Einstein earn the title of one of the greatest ever gen­ius­es? With his arrival in New York; American journalists quickly picked up on the broad­er appreciation for the foreign sc­ien­tist. Apprec­iat­ion wasn’t univ­ersal because the US then was quite xenophobic, suspicious of sc­ience and fearful of dom­in­at­ion. But the nation was also greatly con­cerned with advance­ment. By the time he left the U.S in mid 1921, Einstein was indeed a genius.

He won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1922! But as a Jew, he’d closely observed the rise of Nazism in Berlin in the 1920s.

Einstein admired Toni Meyer Mendel; they first met ear­ly in Weimar Republic (1919-33), Germ­any’s noble years of demo­cracy; both the Ein­st­ein and Mendel fam­il­ies belonged to the same pacif­ist ass­oc­­iat­ion Bund Neues Vater­land. In pre-Hitler Ber­l­in, they’d all liv­ed tog­ether in Tony’s grand villa on the Wannsee, the inter­ior desig­ned by Walter Gropius. Bruno Mendel was a med­ical researcher who built a pri­vate laborat­ory in his villa!

Einstein loved playing music himself

and loved listening to concerts

 
Toni became a wealthy, emanc­ipated widow who loved travel. She was a regular compan­ion of Ein­stein, and their close friend­ship was grimly tolerated by wife Elsa. Einstein and Toni sailed together, discussed Freud, and shared concerts. Toni’s Weimar-culture intrig­ued Einstein, whose interests rang­ed­ far beyond phys­ics. He was devoted to music, playing chamber mus­ic him­self. And he was closely engaged in the excited sch­olarship of the Weimar era! When Hitler came to power, Toni quickly emigrated to Toronto.

In Mar 1933, Albert ex­iled himself in Belgium with Elsa. In late Jul 1933, after the Nazi regime forced famous German Jews to flee, Ein­stein visited the UK on a pol­it­ical mis­s­ion: to help Germ­any’s Jews. He first had a meet­ing with Winston Church­ill at Ch­art­well House to discuss Nazism.

From the Distinguished Visitors’ Gal­lery of Parliament, Einstein lis­ten­ed to a speech in the House of Com­mons. The speaker was an upper-class, right-wing Con­servative M.P, Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson who want­ed Britain to extend citizenship to desperate ref­ug­ees from outside the British Em­pire. And the House voted to sup­p­ort the MP’s bill on its first read­ing! The Nazi newsp­ap­er Völkischer Beo­bacht­er imm­ediately attacked, saying Locker-Lampson staged the event sole­ly for self-publicity.

Albert and his second wife, Elsa

always travelling

Chaim Weizmann welcomed Albert to New York, 1921

Later the president of Israel (1949–52)

Thousands cheered hia motorcade driving to City Hall 

for a welcome by New York City's mayor, April 1921.

Einstein returned to Belgium, where the Nazi leadership savaged him. Firstly they attacked Albert’s “pacifism” when he called for Europ­ean rearmament against the Ger­man th­reat. Secondly Einstein had pub­licly end­orsed a left-wing book The Brown Book of the Hitler Ter­r­or i.e an eye­witness report from Germ­any with horrify­ing photos of Nazi pogroms, burn­ings and tort­ur­es. Fortunately the Belgian king had the police constantly protect Einstein. Still, a secret Nazi terror org­anis­ation Fehme had targeted the scientist

Einstein packed some vital books and papers, and trav­elled from Bel­g­ium to the UK. He went to a hut on a Norfolk heath, to focus on theor­etical physics in peace. During his UK visit in Sep-Oct 1933, organised by Locker-Lampson, Britain’s national news­papers photog­raphed Einstein in hiding! Locker-Lampson org­an­ised a public meeting at the Royal Albert Hall; the German phys­icist and British speakers raised funds for academic Jewish Germ­an ref­ug­ees. Einstein spoke on Science and Civil­is­ation in his cautious Eng­lish, to huge applause from the huge audience. Note there were also British Union of Fascists Blackshirts att­end­ing. Einstein told newspapers the kindness of the British people had touched his heart deeply. Then left for USA.

Einstein lived the rest of his life in America, at the In­stitute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was so involved with both physics and Cold War politics that he never returned to Eur­ope. Elsa was diag­­­­­nosed with organ failure in 1935 and died in 1936. He continued his work and his active social life, with a Russian sculptor’s wife, secretary Betty Neumann, and Toni Mendel again.

In 1953 with the USA gripped by the televised McCarthy hear­ings, Einstein took a well reported public stand against the loathed House Un-American Activities Committee.

In July 1955 after Einstein’s death, British academic Bertrand Rus­sell announced the Russell-Einstein Man­ifesto in London. Warn­ing the world of the dangers of a nuc­l­ear war, the signature had been Eins­tein’s last public act.

Find Einstein on the Road, to read his travelling diaries.

Drs Jonas Salk & Albert Sabin's vaccines to defeat polio - guest post

Polio patients inside iron lungs

Guardian

Before the mid-1950s, panic gripped countries as polio spread globally. Paralytic polio­myeli­tis caused an infection in the cen­t­ral nervous sys­tem, lead­ing to muscle weakness and paralysis. Child­ren were most at risk: thousands were left severely impaired, and the disease killed 2-10% of people who cont­racted it. 1950s school pupils will remember that even children who sur­vived the disease faced long-term issues. Deformed limbs requ­ir­ed leg braces or wheel­chairs, and some needed to breathe via the horrid iron lung.

Parents panicked, trying to keep their children safe: An edict barring children under 7 from school and other pub­lic places was promulgated, perhaps pos­t­­pon­ing the opening of all grades if the situation worsened. Local public heal­th authority advised parents to keep young children in their backyards: alone!

As families clamoured for research into the deadly polio disease, two young doctors searched for cures. Albert Sabin (1906-1993) was born in Bialystok Poland, facing intense anti-Semitism. In 1921, at 15, Albert’s parents moved him to New Jersey to join relat­ives. A brill­iant student, Albert soon learned English well enough to excel in high school.

One of Albert’s uncles was a dentist and he promised to pay for Al­b­ert’s dentistry training. Albert enrolled in New York University; he loved me­dicine and science, but not dentist­ry. So he took extra jobs and schol­­ar­­ships to finance medical school alone. He graduated in Medicine at N.Y Uni in 1931, the year a major polio outbreak panicked N.Y, so Sab­in de­cided to devote him­self to polio resear­ch. He trained as a pathol­ogist, studying in London and New York be­f­ore moving in 1939 to study viruses at Cincin­n­ati’s Chil­dren’s Hos­pital Research Foundation

Dr Albert Sabin (above)

Aish

Dr Jonas Salk 

Washington Post

                                                                          

In WW2 Dr Sabin became a Colonel in the Medical Corps, study­ing viruses affecting American troops. He studied sand-fly fever which was damaging troops in North Africa; he showed that the disease was be­ing spread by mos­quitoes and that mosquito rep­el­lent helped reduce the dis­ease. Sabin also conducted vital wartime re­s­earch on dengue fever, toxo­pl­as­mosis and encephalitis. A vaccine he co-develop against en­ce­ph­alitis was given to c70,000 American troops pre­paring to invade Japan.

Jonas Salk (1914-1995) was born in the Bronx NY to a poor, large Jew­ish family. Early on, Jo­nas realised he wanted to change the world via med­ic­al re­s­earch. He went to City College and New York University’s Medical School. In 1947, Prof Salk at Pittsburgh University School of Medicine undertook a long project to determine the number of diff­erent types of poliovirus and to develop a vaccine against polio. Did he know that in 1949, a poliovirus was successfully cultivated in human tissue by John Enders, Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins at Boston Children’s Hospital, recognised with the 1954 Nobel Prize? 

Dr Sabin made a big discovery: polio was caused by a virus that lived in the small intestines of infected people. He real­ised a vaccine might prevent the virus from enter­ing the blood­stream, stop­ping it from spread­ing into int­estines. Yet some polio vacc­ines tragically ended in the paralysis of patients, or worse, in death. As the 1950s advanced, po­l­io increased and the public needed an effect­ive vaccine.

Dr Salk was part of a prestigious team surveying all U.S polio ca­ses when it became clear that any effective vaccine would have to cont­ain str­ains from 3 distinct polio var­iat­ions. Dr Salk was undeterred, and his self-confidence irritated other resear­ch­ers, but the research team be­lieved they were correctly focused. Salk drew on recent res­earch about growing vaccines in animal tissues under laboratory conditions, cultiv­at­­ing polio viruses in monkey kidney cells. He then killed these virus cells using formaldehyde. Salk’s goal was to develop a vaccine using dead polio cells, clashing with conventional medical wisdom.

Meanwhile Sabin was growing a live-cell vac­c­ine. His vaccine had the ad­vantage of us­ing manipulated polio cells: since these were not the same cells that caused diseases in humans, it was thought that Sabin’s live virus vaccine was safer. It also had the advantage of being able to be administered orally, instead of through an injection as the dead virus vaccines were. Professional rivalry continued.

Salk’s dead cell vaccine had been tested only on anim­als, since offic­ials feared testing it on humans. So in 1954 Salk injected his vaccine into him­self, his wife and child­ren, the first humans to be vac­cinated with this inv­ention. When no ill effects occurred, the world begged for his vaccine.

Also in 1954 the charity March of Dimes arranged a large-scale polio trial for a million children aged 6-9. The trial was given major media coverage, alien­ating many scientists and doctors; they still saw Dr Salk as over-confident. Nonetheless finding a vaccine for polio was the top priority. Half the children in the trial received Salk’s vaccine and the other half received placebos. Dr Salk had succeeded.

At a press con­f­­er­ence at Michigan Uni in Ap 1955, 50,000+ doctors viewed the broad­cast in theatre scr­eenings while ordinary citizens tuned into the radio. When it was announ­ced that Dr Salk’s pol­io vacc­ine was both safe and eff­ective, ch­urch bells rang; parents of young children wept; drug compan­ies started production of Salk doses.

Polio vaccine

BBC

In 1956, Sabin travelled to Russia to work with Russian virologists. He created a team with Dr Mikhail Chumakov, the man responsible for Salk vaccine tests in the Sov­iet Un­ion, performing init­ial tests of the live-attenuated vaccine us­ing a Sabin seed virus. Trials were car­ried out on millions Russian children in 1958 and 10 mil­l­ion children in 1959, and on Czech and Hungarian children in Dec 1959.

Remember Dr Sabin’s vaccine could be taken orally, without needing follow-up doses. By the mid-1960s, Dr Sabin’s became the preferred vaccine in the U.S.

After abolishing polio, the two doctors diverged. Jonas Salk conducted research on AIDS in the 1980s. His greatest post-polio success was est­ablishing San Diego’s Salk In­stitute for Biological Scien­ces, bring­ing scient­ists together. Albert Sabin con­ducted research into can­cer, becom­ing pres­id­ent of the Weizmann Inst­itute of Science in Israel in 1970, until illness intervened. Sabin died in 1993 at 86, while Salk died in 1995 at 80. By then pol­io was a disease of the past. Their vaccines had saved thousands of lives and changed society, but neither ever patented the vaccines!

Dr Joe

Yitzhak Rabin's great career

Leah and Yitzhak Rabin

Jewish Boston

Years ago, I wrote a post about the terrible loss of Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) .  From his humble beginnings, Rabin’s family path exactly followed my own family’s and that may be why my parents admired him so warmly. Rabin’s parents, who came from the Ukraine, raised their children with a strong sense of Zionism, socialism and workers’ rights.

A book has been published called Yitzhak Rabin: Solider, Leader, Statesman, written by Itamar Rabinovich, by Yale University Press (2017). This re­vealing account of Yitzhak Rabin’s life, character and efforts drew both on original research and on the author’s memories as a close aide. The book covered Rabin’s military career before Israel’s War of Independence in 1948; the stunning victory in the Six Day War in 1967 when he served as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces; his term as ambass­ador to the USA (1968-72); his first term as prime minister (1974-77); and his role as Minist­er of Def­ence in the late 1980s.

Itamar Rabinovich asked how did Rabin move from be­ing a hawkish general and prime min­ister of a state whose political identity was forged in war, religious nationalism and the threat of destruction? How did he commit him­self to relentlessly struggling for peace?

The author analysed Rab­in’s relat­ionships with powerful leaders including Bill Clin­ton, Jord­an’s King Hussein and Henry Kiss­inger, and the political developments that shaped his tenure. There was also a focus on Rabin’s relat­ion­ships with imp­ortant Israeli pol­it­icians. Rabin and Shimon Peres dom­inated the Labour Party for many years, and the two men shared a long rivalry. Their rivalry during Rabin's first gov­ern­ment led to vigorous diff­erences regard­ing settlement the Occupied Territories. Rabin also disagreed with Abba Eban, Foreign Minister (1966-74).

 

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Ar­af­at, 

on the White House lawn with President Bill Clinton. 

Sept 1993, BBC

Already before Rabin began his second term as prime minister (1992-5), he saw that Israeli morale was declining. He noted the large numbers of Tel Aviv residents who left the city in 1991, due to the Gulf War Scud missiles that rained on the city. And he was devast­ated when the ter­rorists massacred Jewish school children in Jer­us­alem.

Rabin’s decision to push peace plans was extended to the most urg­ent of Israel's neighbours i.e Syria under Hafez al-Assad. Rabin's state­ment, which was con­vey­ed through the USA Secretary of State Warren Christoph­er, sug­g­es­ted a complete Israeli with­drawal from the Golan Heights; in exch­ange there would be a full peace, free-standing and started before Israel's full with­drawal. Rab­in­ovich blamed the Americans for mishandling Rabin’s peace proposal. Warren Christ­oph­er, for his part, believed Asad's reply was less negat­ive than Rab­in said it was. Rabin and Clinton’s team argued for the first time.

When Syria would not sign a peace agreement, Rabin turned his at­t­ention to the Palestin­ians under Yasser Arafat. Consider the Oslo Peace Process, the signature policy of Rabin’s second term as prime minister. This process recorded the emergence, the dev­el­opment and eventual breakdown of the peace negotiations bet­ween Israel and the PLO, from 1991 on. In Sept 1993 the two men sign­ed a historic declaration of princ­ip­les, pledging to pursue a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

I was very wary about reading more about Rabin’s assassination at the hands of a Jewish right wing killer. But there were still ques­tions to be asked and answered since 1995. What were the implicat­ions of Rabin’s policies? What were the effects of his assass­inat­ion? How did Netanyahu and the right wing win the next election, so soon after Rabin signed the Oslo Accord in 1993 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994? Why did Oslo fail? Had Rabin lived, might Israel have changed direction? Was Yasser Arafat’s unexpected death in 2004 the result of assassination as well?

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Foreign minister Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, 1994.

NobelPrize.org

Conclusion
Rabin’s second term as PM was momentous and to some extent dictates Israel's polit­ical debates even now. The Oslo process, which began in 1993, might appear to be dead, but its goal in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by partitioning the land is alive (UN Security Council Resolution 242, 1967). The Israeli govern­ment currently under Prime Minis­t­er Binyamin Netanyahu opposes it, but the two-state solution is the only viable option for the safety of Jews and the acceptance of a Jewish state by the rest of the world.

Danielle Celermajer suggested that all readers respond to this biography according to their pre-existing position on Israel. If they regarded the 1948 War of Indep­end­ence as an act of force­ful colonialism, then Rabin’s role in building the newly developed Israeli Defence Force would have been criticised. After all, he led the IDF as chief of staff in the 1967 Six Day War. If they saw the Oslo Accords as a betrayal of the Jewish people on right wing pol­it­ical grounds, the Prime Minister Rabin would have been seen a traitor. If read­ers believed Mid­dle Eastern terrorists wanted to wipe Israel off the map, they would have supported Rabin to the last day of his life. This political dove and a military hawk provoked very different responses.

Rabinovich served as amb­assador to the USA (1993-6) and headed the negotiation team with Syria under Rabin. Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing killer who opposed the signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin had been attending a mass rally in Tel Aviv in Nov 1995. I still cannot believe the sense of loss now :(

The author continued under Rabin's suc­c­es­s­or, Shimon Peres, until he resigned when Netanyahu won the 1996 el­ection. How appropriate that Rabinovich’s book on Rab­in’s bold peace initiatives appeared on the Six Day War's 50th anniversary.

Olivia Newton-John, cleverest family ever!

                                   

Olivia and her father Bryn Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John (1948-2022) was born in Cambridge to Bryn Newton-John (1914–92) and Irene Born (1914–2003). Born in middle­-class Wales, Bryn became an MI5 of­f­ic­er on the En­igma pro­ject at Bl­etchley Park that took Rudolf Hess into custody in WW2. After the war, he bec­ame princ­ip­al of the Camb­r­idgeshire Boys High School and was in this post when Olivia was born. Her mother was born in Germany and moved to Britain with her family in 1933 to escape Nazism.

Olivia was the youngest of three children, after bro­ther Dr Hugh (1939–2019) and her sister actress Rona (1941–2013) who married rest­aurateur Brian Gold­sm­ith. In early 1954 when Olivia was 5, her family emigrated to Aust­ralia. Her father worked as a Professor of Ger­man and the master of Ormond Coll­ege at prestigious University of Melbourne. Ol­iv­ia stud­ied at Christ Church Grammar School South Yarra, and then pres­t­igious University High School Parkville.

She initially performed in clubs and TV shows, and reach­ed stardom aft­er her Grammy Award-winning hits I Honestly Love You and Physical, huge successes. In 1974, she released her next album Long Live Love and made the US Bill­board Hot 100. She con­t­inued to release successful albums th­r­oughout the 1970s and 80s, and won her 4th Grammy Award for her video collect­ion Olivia Physical. In total, Olivia released 30 albums in her career and sold c100 million rec­ords worldwide.

She played the lead role in the 1978 romantic musical film Grease, the film’s soundtrack being one of the most succ­ess­ful ever. Dir­ected by Ran­dal Kleiser, the film was a huge success crit­ical­ly and commercially (earning $395 million on a $6 million budget). The sound­­track earned an Oscar nomin­at­ion, and other awards. 

Grease, 1978

Other films included Xanadu (1980), She’s Having a Baby (1988) and It’s My Party (1996). She was last seen in the 2011 Australian-British com­edy film A Few Best Men, dir­ected by Dean Craig. She also app­eared in several TV shows, includ­ing American Idol.

Olivia was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, and survived a tax­ing chemotherapy treatment. She was an entrepreneur and activist for envir­on­mental and animal rights issues, and also advocated for breast cancer research. After es­tablishing the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, she recovered and was cancer-free for se­v­eral years before her cancer returned in 2017. Later it painfully spread to Ol­iv­ia's bones; she died in Aug 2022 at 73. RIP

How did Olivia Newton-John make such a brilliant career for herself? In my opinion, she picked her ancestors very carefully. Her maternal grandfather was German Jew­ish physic­ist Max Born (1882-1970), arguab­ly one of the cleverest scientists of his era. He was most famous for his work on quan­t­um mechanics, showing that the wave funct­ion could be in­t­er­p­reted as the prob­ability amplitude of finding a particle at a spec­if­­ic point in space and a specific moment in time.

5fth Solvay Conference, Brussels 1927.
Max Born was 2nd from right in middle row.

Look for other geniuses: Wolfgang Pauli, William Lawrence Bragg, Niels Bohr, Max Plan­ck, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein.

Jewish born and raised, Born was of­fic­ially bap­tised as a Lutheran in 1914, before Irene's bir­th. He had to escape Germany to the UK on the accession of the Nazis to power in 1933. Two years later he pub­l­ish­ed The Restless Universe, an introduction to modern physics. Born became a natur­alised British citizen in 1939 and a Fellow of the Royal Soc­iety that year. He was offered a professorship at the Univ­ers­ity of Edin­bur­gh by the physicist grandson of Charles Darwin, and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954.

Maternal grandmother Hedwig was the daughter of German Jewish legal sch­olar Victor Ehren­berg (1851-1929), and of his Lut­h­eran wife Helene von Jhering (1852-1920), daughter of the legal historian Rudolf von Jhering (1828–1892). After Wolf­enbüttel gymnasium Victor Ehren­berg studied le­gal science in Gött­ingen, Lei­pzig, Heidelberg and Freiburg, then lect­ured at Univers­it­ies of Göt­t­ingen (from 1877), Rostock and Lei­pzig (un­til 1922). Victor’s son Rud­olf Ehren­berg was Pro­f of Phys­iol­ogy & Med­icine at Göttingen Uni; his daughter Hedwig Ehrenberg (1891–1972) married scientist Max Born.

Victor Ehrenberg  

Note Ol­ivia’s more distant relatives who included composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929)

Olivia's German-British un­cle Gustav Vic­tor Born, (1921–2018) was nother son of scientist Max Born and Hedwig Ehrenberg. Family photos showed him as a young child on Einst­ein's knee, and he playing for happy hours making paper airplanes from German theoret­ical physic­ist and quantum mechanics expert Werner Heisen­berg's maths notes. After fleeing Ger­m­any in 1933, Gustav studied medicine at Edinburgh Uni and served with the Roy­al Army Medical Corps, seeing Hir­oshima’s atomic bomb. He focused on the survivors’ severe bleeding disor­ders, the lack of plate­­lets coming­ from radiation da­mage.

As the Prof of Pharmac­ology at King's College London, and Prof at Wil­liam Harvey Res­earch Instit­ute and The London School of Medicine and Dent­is­try, Prof Gustav Born de­vel­oped a device to measure the plate­let agg­regation rate which re­vol­ut­ionised the dia­g­nosis of platelet­-related blood diseases, and help­ed devel­op­ antiplatelet medicines. He revolut­ion­ised cardiology and haem­atology, and reduced the risk of heart att­ack/stroke for millions worldwide. What a family!

Albert Einstein: a new museum to celebrate genius.

Born in Ulm Germany, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) married Mileva Marić in 1903 and had their first son in 1904 in Switzerland. But it was 1905 that was a frantic, miraculous year for the young scientist. He publish­ed papers, form­ulated the th­eory of spe­c­ial relat­iv­ity and expl­ained the photo-electric ef­f­ect. Then he sub­mit­ted his doctoral diss­ert­ation On the Motion of Small Part­icles.

Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna 

1921. Wikipedia

Brussels' Solvay Conference, the first world physics conference held in 1911, became a legend. 3 people stood out: Marie Curie, Ernest Ruth­erford and Albert Einstein.

Einstein was soon known as a great scientist. His theories of rel­a­t­ivity revolutionised science by introducing new ways of looking at ob­jects moving in space and time. And he made major con­­­tribut­ions to quantum mechanics theory, winning the 1921 Nobel Ph­ys­­ics Prize. Einstein travelled the world raising mon­ey for Heb­rew University, includ­ing on a 1921 trip to the U.S with fel­l­ow scien­t­ist Chaim Weiz­mann who later became Israel’s first Pre­s­­id­ent. In the mean­time, Einst­ein served on the university’s first board of governors.

He fled Germany in 1933 when the Nazi party came to power, moving to the US. Einstein’s commitment to Judaism and Zionism remained strong, and he continued as one of the most prominent supporters of the State of Israel and one of the founding fathers of Hebrew Univ­er­sity. He was a non-resident governor of the institution!

Einstein in his N.J study with violinist Bronislaw Huberman,

March 1937, Ripley's

Einstein’s connection to Is­rael was so strong, that when Presid­ent Weiz­mann died in 1952, the state offered the role to Ein­s­tein. Th­ough he was moved by the offer, Einstein ref­used, saying his exp­er­tise was in science and that he lacked the skill to deal with of­f­ic­ial funct­ions. Instead, Einstein’s brilliant legacy in scient­if­ic res­earch continued as the foundation of Hebrew Uni.

When Einstein wrote his last will, he bequeathed his manusc­rip­ts, copyrights, pub­l­ic­ation rights, royalties and all other literary property and rights, of every nature whatsoever to Hebrew Uni­. Lauded as one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time, Einstein died in 1955 aged 76.

A number of residential and museum sites have already been ident­if­ied to honour Albert Einstein. A]The Historisches Museum Bern has 1000m² of exhibition space that offers details of the physicist’s life. B]Einstein lived in six different houses in Zurich, all still pres­erv­ed today. At one property, a plaque honours its former fam­ous resident. C]A simple, wooden house in Caputh village on Lake Templin is 15 ks near Berlin, custom-built for Einstein in 1929. He hosted a wide range of glamorous guests from the science and arts world in Caputh. And D]Albert Einstein House in Prin­ce­ton N.J from 1935-55 was never made into a museum. But it was design­at­ed a U.S National Historic Landmark in 1976.

After he died, Israeli officials cleaned out Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton N.J. They packed up all of his papers, photos, medals and ot­h­er ephemera, placed them in big wooden crates and loaded them onto ships, trav­elling to the Hebrew Univer­s­ity with police escorts. His archives were then stor­ed away on the second floor of a Hebrew Uni building.­

In 2022 Israel’s government approved the funding and establishment of Albert Einstein Museum on the campus of Hebrew Uni, the Jerus­al­em sch­ool the physic­ist helped establish a century ago.

Costing $18 million, an abandoned planetarium at the Givat Ram cam­pus will be rebuilt to contain the c85,000 Einstein items, making it the world's most ext­ensive Einsteinian collec­t­ion. The gov­­ernment comm­it­ted c$6 mil­lion and the university $12 mill­ion.

New museum's collection of documents and photos

With or­iginal docum­ents, mod­ern exh­ib­ition tech­niques & scien­tific demonstrations, the Mus­eum will present Einstein’s contrib­ut­ions to science, the impact of his dis­coveries in the world of ph­ysics on modern lives, his public activity and his in­volvement in key historical moments. Einstein archives will be viewable by the general public and the museum will serve as a space for sc­ientific and technological education, and demonstrat­ions. The library and office will be reconstructed versions of his old Princeton facilities.

Einstein's theories of relativity revolutionised the field by intr­oducing new ways of looking at the movement of objects in sp­ace and time. He also made major contributions to quantum mec­han­ics theory, and won the Nobel physics prize for 1921. But he is still one of the biggest names in the world for intel­ligence, science and genius around the world. Thus the mu­seum will become a pilgrimage site for anyone who wants to un­d­er­stand Einstein in particular, and intell­ig­ence in gen­eral.

Statue of Albert Einstein by Georgy Frangulyan,

Givat Ram campus, Jerusalem.

Times of Israel

Brilliant Czech doctor, Jan Janský 1873-1921 ........ Guest post

I could be seen as having two vested interests in this story (being Czech and a doctor). But I will try not to exaggerate the importance of  some brilliant Czech medical science.

Throughout history, people knew it was imp­os­s­ib­le to live without blood, but they knew nothing about its com­p­os­ition. Most of the dis­coveries about this vi­tal fluid only em­er­ged after the invention of good microsc­opes and medical proced­ur­es. Thus serology began as the scientific study of serum and other body fl­uids in c1900. In practice serology ref­er­red to the diag­nostic id­ent­ific­at­ion of antibodies in the serum. Anti­­bodies were typically formed in res­p­onse to an infection, against other foreign proteins, or to one's own proteins as in auto-immune disease.      

Jan Janský 1902

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Jan Janský 1873-1921 was born near Prague, son of a soap maker, and studied medicine in Ch­arles Uni Prague. From 1899 he work­ed in a Pr­ag­­ue psychiatric clinic and once he became a Professor, he gave expert psychiatric evidence in many court cases.

Dr Jansky was interested in if, and how men­­tal disorders were triggered by blood disorders. He wanted to learn if the serum of psych­otic patients, esp­ec­ially schiz­o­ph­­ren­ics, differed in its coagulation char­ac­teristics from the one from the nor­mal people. In a sam­ple of 3,160 mentally ill patients that he examined, Dr Jansky demonstrated that human blood was divided into 4 basic types accord­ing to specific differ­ences in the properties of red blood cells. With the blood coagulation, Jansky establish­ed in his original research  the four basic blood groups that we now call A, B, O and AB!

The ABO blood group system depends on the presence

or absence of an A or B antigen on the red blood cells.

Study.com

How­ever he did not go on to do further research on blood and focused solely on psychiat­ry and neuro­logical disorders. Dr Jansky intens­ive­­ly re­s­earched the nature and signific­ance of cerebrospinal fluid. After some years of research, he concluded that there was no correl­ation between blood clotting and human mental illness. So in Nov 1906 he gave a lect­ure, then published his findings in a Czech paper cal­l­ed Haematologic St­udies in Mental Patients (1907), report­ing no cor­rel­at­ion bet­w­een the two. Fortunately in the study he did rep­eat how he classified the four types of blood.

Austrian biologist, physician and imm­un­ologist Karl Landst­ein­er (1868-1943) studied medicine at the University of Vienna. To specialise in chemistry he spent five years in the laboratories of Hantzsch at Zurich, Emil Fischer at Wurzburg and E. Bamberger at Munich. Back at home, Landsteiner resumed his medical studies at the Vienna General Hospital, and in 1896 he became an assistant under Max von Gruber in the Hygiene Institute at Vienna. 

Landsteiner also described the existence of blood groups, but he only identified 3 groups, not the 4 groups we know today. At the time, Drs Janský and Land­st­einer were unaware of each other's work. Later Dr Landsteiner accepted an invitation to go to the Rockefeller Institute, New York.

Karl Landsteiner

Famous Scientists

A similar classification was described by Am­erican physician Dr William Moss. He dev­el­op­ed the Moss System of blood groups in 1910, used to ensure safe transf­usions. The only issue was that Moss’ blood groups I and IV were the opp­osite of Janský's, leading to some con­fusion in blood transfusion. Note that Dr Moss researched the blood types independently of his Eur­opean colleagues. He heard about Dr Jánský only after his dis­c­overies and before their publication in 1910. Later he rightfully credited Dr Jánský with the discoveries.

Dr Jan­ský's discovery was not really noticed, nor celebrated. But in any case, WW1 started and Jan served 2 years as a doctor at the Front, until he suf­fered a heart attack which prev­ented him from serving longer in the army. However he spent the rest of WW1 working as a neuro-psychiatrist in a military hospital.

With his discovery it made poss­ible to make the transf­usions without the risk that the patient might die when receiving the blood of an in­app­rop­riate donor. Jan’s contrib­ution thus saved many lives by in­suring they got the right type of blood during a trans­fusion. Rec­eiving an incompatible donor’s blood could have been terrible.

The different systems continued to create some danger in U.S medical practice. To resolve the issue, the American Association of Immunologists & Association of Pathologists & Bacteriolog­ists made a joint recommendation in 1921 that the Jansky classific­ation be adopted.

Janský was also a committed proponent of voluntary blood donations, campaign­ing for or­dinary citizens to give. This human­itarian legacy lives on today, when people who donate blood regularly in the Czech Republic and Sl­ov­akia get a Jansky medal of honour. What a fitt­ing way to hon­our his contribution to science!

In 1921, America’s Medical Comm­is­sion acknowledged Janský's 4-group classif­ic­ation over Dr Land­st­einer's who classified blood into only 3 groups. So I am still uncer­t­ain why Landsteiner won the No­bel Pr­ize in Phy­siology or Medicine for his blood type discovery in 1930!! One explanation was that Dr Jánský, as a spec­ial­ist psych­iatrist, did not further build on his res­earch - he was still working as a neuro­psychiatrist in a military hospital when he died in 1921.  Meanwhile Dr Landsteiner dedicated his medical life to blood research. 

Tomb of Dr.Jan Janský

Malvazinky Cemetery

Summary Dr Jansky was a Czech serologist, neurologist and psychiat­rist. He was cred­ited with the first classification of blood into the four types but never won a No­bel Prize or other world honour. On­ly decades la­ter was the man slowly celebrated as the true discoverer of the 4 blood gr­oups. 

See the Czech film, The Secret of Blood (1953) . 

Dr Joe             

   

Denmark's and Kenya's favourite author: Karen Dinesen Blixen

Karen Dinesen (1885–1962) was born in Rungsted on Denmark’s Zealand Isl­and, one of 5 children. Her army officer father Wilhelm was an ad­ven­t­urer who worked as a fur trap­per in North America. He ret­ur­n­ed to Den­mark, after fathering a child in the U.S! Then he suic­ided in 1895 after being diagnosed with syphilis, when Karen was only 10. 

Karen Dinesen, 1914

photo credit: Blixen Museum

Out of Af­rica 

published in 1937

Karen went to the Royal Acad­emy of Art, Cop­enhagen, then spent her time studying in Paris, London, Rome and Switzerland. The foll­owing year she was accept­ed by the newly established women’s school at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Later as a writer, she wrote eloquently in both Danish and English, pub­lish­ing her short stories in various Danish period­ic­als in 1905!

In 1914 in Mombasa on the Eastern African coast, Dinesen marr­ied her Swedish cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, giving her the title Baron­ess Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The young couple oper­at­ed a cof­fee plant­at­ion gifted by their two fam­il­ies, and life for them was initially blissful. But the passionate ideals that the cou­p­le began with in Af­rica changed into chal­lenging hardships. They had formed a comp­any just as WW1 started, when the Ger­m­an-Brit­ish fighting in British East Africa created a shortage of workers and supplies.

Gregarious Bror was frequently away on safari, yet it was during this first year of marr­iage that Karen con­t­racted syphilis from the un­faithful Bror. Back then syphilis was treated with arsenic and mercury, treatments that con­tributed to her declining heal­th over the years. The couple separ­at­ed in 1921 and were div­orced in 1925, with Karen being left to run the prob­lematic coffee plantation. Bror was dismissed from his position in the Karen Cof­fee Co, but runn­ing the financ­ial­ly troubled farm alone was a daunting task for Karen.

While still in Africa, Karen fell in love with English big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, with whom she lived from 1926-31. They never married because of Karen’s health issues, and after sev­eral miscarriages, she was sterile. Worse, their relation­ship suddenly ended when Finch Hatton’s plane crashed in 1931. This trag­edy, com­pounded by the failure of the coffee plant­ation during the Great Depression, damaged Dinesen's heal­th and finan­ces. She was forced to sell the Karen Coffee Co. to a resident­ial dev­el­oper and had to ab­andon her beloved farm in 1931. In saying goodbye to Af­rica, she knew she’d never return again.

After returning to Denmark in 1931, Blixen completely immer­sed her­self in writing. Originally written in Afr­ica, Seven Gothic Tales (1934) was published in English under the name Isak Dinesen. Then a Danish version followed. Gothic Tales was a master­piece when it was first published in U.S and Britain, but failed to be celebrat­ed in Denmark.

Blixen’s second and best known memoir was enormously successful wh­ich established her esteemed reput­ation. Out of Af­rica 1937 was a semi-auto­bio­graph­ical book in which she told of her Kenyan years. But she didn’t share the sordid de­tails of her marr­iage and her aff­air with the English hunter. This book vividly des­cribed pion­eering a coffee farm, and the So­m­ali and the Masai tribes in Kenya.

When the Nazis occupied Denmark in WW2, Blixen started to write Win­ter's Tales (1942) which was smuggled out of the occupied country through Sweden. When the U.S joined the war, a pocketbook edition was given to soldiers fighting in the war. Then she wrote The Ang­elic Avengers (1944), her only full-length novel, one that alluded to Nazis horror.

Her writing during the 1950s consisted of story­telling that she began in Africa. The most famous was Babette's Feast (1950), looking at an old cook who was not able to show her true skills un­til she got a chance at a celebration. An Imm­ortal Story (1958), in which an elderly man tried to buy youth, was adapted onto the screen in 1968 by Orson Welles.

Blixen suffered permanent ill health eg loss of leg sensation that ?was due to use of arsenic as a tonic in Africa. She also suff­ered from panic attacks, describing it as walk­ing in a nightmare. Her health continued to deter­ior­ate into the 1950s; in 1955 she had her stomach reduc­ed due to an ulcer and writing became impossible. What­ever the truth about her diag­nos­es, the stigma attached to this ill­ness suited the Baroness’ purp­ose in cultivating a mysterious pers­ona for her­self. She died in 1962 at 77.

Karen Blixen received the 1950 Danish Ingen­uity and Art Award. She was nominated for the Literat­ure Nobel Prize twice, (1954, 1957); she was also shortlisted for 1962 Nobel Prize but owing to her sudden death, became inelig­ib­le.

In 1985 a film based on her autobiography, Out of Africa, opened and won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Pic­ture.

Blixen lived at the family estate Rungsted­lund, near Cop­en­hagen. This old estate had been operated both as an inn and a farm, then it opened to the pub­lic as a Mus­eum in 1991.

Museum  of Rungsted­lund, 

near Cop­en­hagen.

 

Her old Kenyan home Bogani House was home to various families until it was bought by the Danish government in 1964 and given to the Kenyans to mark Independence. The Nat­ion­al Museums of Kenya eventually acquired the house and furniture that Blixen had sold decades before. The Museum was opened in 1986, with farm tools including a contemporary tractor, wag­ons, ploughs and an orig­inal coffee proc­es­sing factory equipment. Tours are offered each day by multi­lingual guides, and the museum shop has a wide select­ion of pos­t­ers and post­cards, films and books.

Karen, the Nair­obi suburb where Blixen had lived and op­er­at­ed her Kenyan coffee plant­ation, has a Karen Blixen Coffee House & Museum!

Blixen Museum in Kenya

was opened in 1986

The best blog post is Poetry of R.E Slater.