August Paul von Wassermann (1866-1925) was German bacteriologist and hygienist who, after completing his MD at Strasburg in 1890, worked with Koch at the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin, becoming Director of Experimental Therapy there in 1906. In the same year he developed the famous "Wassermann Test" for syphilis, employing a blood-antibody reaction based on the "alexine/complement"-fixation discovery of Bordet. See also the earlier work of Schaudinn. Among his publications was a massive compendium of disease-causing microbes, the Handbuch der Pathogenen Mikroorganismen, written with Wilhelm Kolle (1868-1935) and published in six volumes by Fischer at Jena between 1902 and 1909.
Created 2 February 2023