Karl Landsteiner

Facts

Karl Landsteiner

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Karl Landsteiner
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1930

Born: 14 June 1868, Vienna, Austrian Empire (now Austria)

Died: 26 June 1943, New York, NY, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York, NY, USA

Prize motivation: “for his discovery of human blood groups”

Prize share: 1/1

Work

When a person loses lots of blood through accident or illness, it must be replaced. When transfusions from one person to another were tried, however, the result was very often disastrous. Karl Landsteiner discovered why: when different people's blood was mixed, the red blood cells sometimes clumped. He explained in 1901 that people have different types of red blood cells, that is, there are different blood groups. The discovery led to safe blood transfusions between people with compatible blood groups.

To cite this section
MLA style: Karl Landsteiner – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Tue. 6 Dec 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1930/landsteiner/facts/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Streams during Nobel Week

Coming up

Watch the 2022 Nobel Prize lectures, the Nobel Prize Concert, Nobel Week Dialogue, the prize award ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm and Nobel Peace Prize Forum here at nobelprize.org.
Watch lectures and award ceremonies

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.

Play a game

Blood typing game

What happens if you get a blood transfusion with the wrong blood type? Learn more about blood groups in the blood typing game! The game helps you understand how blood groups work.

Blood typing game