Remembering Rudolf Weigl on His Birthday

Rudolf Weigl was a Polish biologist, inventor, and physician. He is actually known for creating the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus.

Today is Rudolf Weigl’s birthday. Google celebrates his birthday by making a doodle. The doodle of the search engine shows the Polish designer holding a test tube in his gloved hands and drawings of lice on the divider on one side and a human body on the other. The illustrator has spelled out the name of Google with a microscope, beakers on bunsen burners, and test tubes in holders all placed on a lab table. This is the most significant way to pay homage to this eminent person who saved the world. 

Rudolf Stefan Weigl was born and brought up in the Austro-Hungarian town of Przerow ( presently the Czech Republic) on September 2, 1883. He went on to study biological sciences at Poland’s Lwow University. In 1914, he was appointed as a parasitologist in the Polish Army.

After world war II in 1914, when millions across Eastern Europe were affected by typhus, Mr. Weigl became determined to stop its spread.

Weigl worked at a military hospital in Przemyśl. Here he supervised the Laboratory for the Study of Spotted Typhus from 1918-1920. As he began researching and experimenting with the disease typhus, he started to discover and develop a vaccine.

After the intrusion of Poland by Germany in 1939, Weigl proceeded with his examination and work at an establishment in Lemberg. There, he had the option to build a creation of his typhus immunization. Weigl went through the following four years in Lemberg zeroing in his examination on fostering an immunization for the spotted fever. He drove and coordinated the Institute for Typhus and Virus Research situated in Lemberg.

Weigl had the option to make an immunization for the spotted fever notwithstanding, it didn’t offer resistance against the infection. All things considered, it diminished the side effects, taking into consideration a lot milder contamination in people.

During the Nazi German control of Poland in World War II, Weigl’s examination pulled in the consideration of the Nazis. At the point when they involved Lviv, they requested him to set up a typhus immunization creation plant at his Institute. Weigl employed various Jewish companions and associates at the creation plant. Around 1,000 individuals worked there. Weigl utilized and secured Polish learned people, Jews, and individuals from the Polish underground.

A large number of these individuals he recruited helped him in his typhus examination and trials with lice. Large numbers of his Jewish partners essentially developed the lice and consequently, they got food, security, and dosages of the immunization when it was completely developed. His antibodies were pirated into ghettos in Lviv and Warsaw, different death camps, and surprisingly certain Gestapo jails.

It was assessed that Weigl had the option to save around 5,000 lives during the Nazi’s reign. His foundation was subsequently closed somewhere near the Soviet Union after their 1944 enemy of German hostile. In 1945, Weigl moved to Krakow, Poland. Rudolf Weigl died on 11 August 1957 in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane. He was just 73 years old.