| Authorised form of name | Ehrlich; Paul (1854 - 1915); biochemist |
| Dates | 1854 - 1915 |
| Nationality | German |
| Place of birth | Strehlen, Lower Silesia province of Prussia, Germany, Europe [present day Wrocław, Poland, Europe] |
| Date of birth | 14 March 1854 |
| Place of death | Bad Homburg, Germany, Europe |
| Date of death | 20 August 1915 |
| Occupation | biochemist |
| Research field | Biochemistry |
| Physiology |
| Haematology |
| Immunology |
| Chemotherapy |
| Activity | Education: Gymnasium, Breslau; University of Breslau; University of Strassburg; University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau; University of Leipzig.
Career:
Appointed assistant to Professor Frerichs at the Berlin Medical Clinic (1878) where he was able to work with dyes and staining tissues with them, laying foundations for future work on haematology and staining of tissues; published his method of staining the tubercle bacillus that Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (FRS 1897) had discovered (1882); Titular Professor (1882); qualified following his thesis Das Sauerstoffbedürfnis des Organismus (The need of the organism for oxygen) as a Privatdozent in the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Berlin (1887); Associate Professor at the University of Berlin; Senior House Physician to the Charité Hospital in Berlin; assistant to Koch at the Institute for Infectious Diseases (1890); Director of a newly established institute for the control of therapeutic sera at Steglitz, Berlin (1896); appointed Public Health Officer at Frankfurt-am-Main (1897); Director of the Royal Institute of Experimental Therapy (1899); Director of the Georg Speyerhaus (1899); devoted later years of his life to the experimental work on tumours, sarcoma, and his theory of athreptic immunity to cancer; suffered a stroke (1914); died of a second stroke whilst on holiday in Bad Homburg (1915).
Memberships:
Privy Medical Counsel to the Prussian Government 1897; followed by Counsel in 1907; culminating in the Real Privy Counsel with the title of Excellency in 1911.
Medals/Awards:
Tiedemann Prize of the Senckenberg Naturforschende Gesellschaft 1887
Prize of Honour at the XVth International Congress of Medicine at Lisbon 1906
Nobel Prize (Physiology or Medicine) 1908
Liebig Medal of the German Chemical Society 1911
Cameron Prize of the University of Edinburgh 1914 |
| Membership category | Foreign Member |
| Date of election | 30/06/1910 |
| Age at election | 56 |
| Proposer | Ralph Allen Sampson; Hector Munro Macdonald; Horace Lamb; Percy Alexander MacMahon; Aubrey Strahan; Charles James Martin; Walter Holbrook Gaskell |
| Archibald Geikie; Alfred Bray Kempe; John Rose Bradford; William Crookes; Herbert Brereton Baker; William Henry Perkin; David Prain; Arthur Everett Shipley; Edward Bagnall Poulton |
| Royal Society activity | Lectures:
Croonian 1900 |
| Relationships | Parents: Ismar Ehrlich and Rosa Weigert.
Spouse: Hedwig Pinkus (1883).
Children: Stephanie and Marianne. |
| Published works | RCN R81085 |
| General context | Discovered mast cells in 1877.
Discovered basophils in 1879.
Found the cure for syphillis im 1909.
Introduced receptor theory in collaboration with John Newport Langley (FRS 1883).
Proposed Seitenkettentheorie (side chain theory) to explain the immune response in living cells.
Credited with initiating chemotherapy.
Coined the term magic bullet to refer to the production of substances that would seek out disease causing agents.
Ehrlich's reagent is named after him. |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
| Sources | Sources:
Bulloch's Roll; DSB; Science History Institute Museum & Library Scientific Biohraphies, Paul Ehrlich [URL: https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/paul-ehrlich/; last accessed 10/04/2024]; The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1908, Paul Ehrich Biographical [URL: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1908/ehrlich/biographical/; last accessed: 10/04/2024]
References:
G V R Born, FRS, 'The wide-ranging family history of Max Born' in NR 2002 vol 56 pp 219-262
Anne Cooke, 'From Microbes to Man. Ulf Lagerkvist, Pioneers of microbiology and the Nobel Prize' in NR 2004 vol 58 pp 234-236
A F Bristow, T Barrowcliffe and D R Bangham, 'Standardization of biological medicines: the first hundred years, 1900-2000' in NR 2006 vol 60 pp 271-289
Obituaries:
Proc Roy Soc Series B 1921 vol 92 pp i-vii signed by R M |
| Virtual International Authority File | http://viaf.org/viaf/95371829 |
| Royal Society code | NA7579 |
| Reference number | Title | Date |
| EC/1910/18 | Ehrlich, Paul: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |
| IM/005267 | Ehrlich, Paul | 1993 |
| RR/15/44 | Referee's report by Sidney Harris Cox Martin, on the Croonian Lecture 'Immunity with special reference to cell life' by Paul Ehrlich | 8 May 1900 |
| RR/15/45 | Referee's report by John Rose Bradford, on the Croonian Lecture 'Immunity with special reference to cell life' by Paul Ehrlich | May 1900 |
| NLB/20/688 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor Paul Ehrlich, [Fellow of the Royal Society] | 18 June 1900 |
| NLB/20/304 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor Paul Ehrlich, [Fellow of the Royal Society] | 16 March 1900 |
| NLB/20/261 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor Dr Paul Ehrlich, [Fellow of the Royal Society], Westendstrasse 62, Frankfurt am Main, Germany | 8 March 1900 |
| NLB/20/669 | Copy letter from Arthur William Rucker, to Herrn Professor Dr Paul Ehrlich, Westendstrasse, 62, Frankfort-on-Main | 14 June 1900 |
| NLB/20/353 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, [Fellow of the Royal Society] | 31 March 1900 |
| NLB/20/509 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Rose Bradford, Fellow of the Royal Society | 10 May 1900 |
| NLB/20/506 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor William Dobinson Halliburton, Fellow of the Royal Society | 9 May 1900 |
| NLB/21/67 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor Dr Paul Ehrlich, Westendstrasse, 62 Frankfurt, Germany | 24 July 1900 |
| NLB/21/16 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Dr Bashford, Königliche Institut fur experimentelle Therapie, Frankfurt | 16 July 1900 |
| NLB/35/160 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor Ernest Henry Starling, Fellow of the Royal Society | 26 April 1907 |
| NLB/37/720 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Dr A [Augustus] D [Desire] Waller, Fellow of the Royal Society | 5 May 1908 |
| RR/15/42 | Referee's report by John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, on the Croonian Lecture 'Immunity with special reference to cell life' by Paul Ehrlich | April 1900 |
| NLB/20/326 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor William Dobinson Halliburton, Fellow of the Royal Society | 23 March 1900 |
| NLB/21/17 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Dr Paul Ehrlich, [Fellow of the Royal Society], Westendstrasse 62, Frankfurt | 16 July 1900 |
| NLB/20/421 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Dr E F Bashford, Königliche Instituts für Experimentelle Therapie, Sandhofsrasse 44, Frankfurt | 24 April 1900 |
| HD/25/2 | Paul Ehrlich letters to Henry Dale | 1903-1904 |
| RR/15/43 | Letter from John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, on the Croonian Lecture 'Immunity with special reference to cell life' by Paul Ehrlich to Halliburton | 29 April 1900 |
| MC/25/62 | Letter from [Paul] Ehrlich, Westendstrasse 62, Frankfurt, to the [Honorary] Secretary of the Royal Society, London, SW.6 | 15 October 1910 |
| NLB/42/649 | Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to "Nature" | July 1910 |
| MC/27/104 | Letter from [Paul] Ehrlich, Strasse 44, Frankfurt, [Germany], to the President and Council of the Royal Society, Burlington House, London | 24 April 1912 |