Johannes Fibiger
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1926
Born: 23 April 1867, Silkeborg, Denmark
Died: 30 January 1928, Copenhagen, Denmark
Affiliation at the time of the award: Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark
Prize motivation: “for his discovery of the Spiroptera carcinoma”
Johannes Fibiger received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1927.
Prize share: 1/1
Work
In cancer, cells grow and multiply beyond normal limits. Johannes Fibiger suspected that a roundworm caused cancer in rats. After he declared that cockroaches served as an intermediate host for the worm, he indicated in 1913 that rats that had ingested worm larvae by eating cockroaches developed cancer. However, it later turned out that the primary cause of the cancer was a lack of vitamin A instead, and that the worm larvae only caused damage to tissue, where the cancer could begin developing.
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