In today’s Google Doodle, Rudolf Weigl is seen holding a test tube in his glove. On both sides of the wall are pictures of lice and the human body Spelled in Google Doodle with bunsen burners, Microscope and Biker placed on the lab table.
Google Doodle celebrated the 138th birthday of Polish inventor, doctor and immunologist Rudolf Wigel on September 2 with an animated graphic. Rudolf Weigl is known for producing the first effective vaccine against pandemic typhus, one of the oldest and most contagious diseases.
Know More about Rudolf Weigl
| Life dates | 1883(2 September) – 1957(11 August) |
| place of birth | Prerov, Czechia |
| place of Death | Zakopane, Poland |
| Profession | Physician.Biologist,University teacher |
| 1920 | Became a professor and head of the Department of General Biology at Lviv University |
| Name variants | |
How does Rudolf Wig save lives?
Rudolf Weigel has been nominated for the Nobel Prize many times, but he has never won. Moreover, he did not even become a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. There is no doubt that ethnic issues have played a role here. Can a German surnamed Weig be a Polish academician?
Rudolf Weigl’s highest prize was awarded to the city of Lviv-10,000 zlotys. Most of the award is used by scientists to purchase new equipment in the laboratory. Personal income is small: give his wife a good fur coat, and the Swedes spin to the avid angler himself.
But the peaceful life is over. In 1939, World War II broke out. The city of Lviv “migrated” into the Soviet Union along with the entire western Ukraine. The Wigl Institute is still working. Typhus vaccine began to enter the Red Army. Rudolf Weigl traveled to Kiev, Kharkov, Leningrad and Moscow with reports. Khrushchev (Khrushchev), who later led Ukraine, promised the scientist that he would confer the title of academician.
Fortunately, this shopping cart with gifts passed by. On June 29, 1941, German troops entered the city. The star of Professor Rudolf Weigel seems to have risen. As a German, he can formally lead the institute, and the empire and its army need the institute-there is no doubt about this.
However, Weiger did not hesitate, did not fill in the necessary documents, and did not become a “German law“, it can be said to be a “German law“. He prefers that someone else will serve as the director of the institute.
However, for Weigl, the status of a scientific advisor can still solve the personnel problem.
Weigl seized this opportunity immediately. The number of donors feeding typhoid lice has increased dramatically. These include world-renowned scientists from the University of Lviv: mathematician Stefan Banach, psychologist Jan Kreuz, geographer Yevgeny Romer. This is the salvation of Polish intellectuals from destruction.
“Sabotage” is not words, but real murder. As soon as the German army entered Lviv, it shot 28 Polish professors. The Wegge Academy is the real cover for the surviving repression of the Poles in Lviv, and the only way to make a living. Cards and money were given to the donor. Most importantly, the donor obtained an employee certificate from a research institute affiliated with the German army.
Weigl also helped the Jews survive. Since the Soviet era, the institute has left 30,000 doses. The label of the ampoule is in Russian. These unknown vaccines have been provided to hospitals in the slums of Lviv and Warsaw.
Rudolf Weigl has the right to mobilize “useful” Jews to work at the Typhoid Institute, as evidenced by the fact that without such workers, the most important vaccine against typhoid fever will cease. Therefore, he sheltered many Jewish colleagues under the roof of his research institute.
He also tried to save the microbiologist Philip Eisenberg, who worked under his leadership during the First World War and began fighting with him against typhus. At that time Eisenberg lived and worked in Krakow. Came to Lviv at Weig’s invitation, but he refused, hoping to hide in his hometown. However, these professors were hunted down, arrested, and sent to the Bergez death camp, where he died.
In 1944, the German army broke away from the advancing Soviet army and withdrew from the Wegge Academy in Poland. When the Red Army entered Poland, the institute was closed. In 1945, Rudolf Weigl moved to Krakow and became the head of the General Microbiology Institute of Jagiellonian University. In Krakow, the production of vaccines against typhoid fever began.
But Professor Rudolf Weig did not become “his” in New Poland. In 1948, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize next (and last) time. This time, the award was hindered by the Polish communist authorities. They wrote to the Nobel Committee, accusing Weige of cooperating with the Nazis.
This cooperation was formally carried out, and the Nobel Committee again decided not to award the prize to the creator of the anti-typhus vaccine.
After a while, Weigl suspended his work at the Institute of Microbiology and transferred to the Department of Biology of Poznan Medical University as a teacher. That is the sunset of life. Weigl retired and settled in Zakopane, where he died soon-the story of the scientist is over.
They tried not to remember his merits in saving many people in communist Poland during the war, for many reasons. Including because the vaccine provided by the Weigler Institute was given to the Polish partisans of the Craiova anti-Soviet forces.
Once again, the Polish scientists he kept were classified as unreliable bourgeois experts in the leadership of the time. Frankly, they are. The salvation of Jews from slums is also not a popular topic. They tried not to talk about the Holocaust. Not there, nothing more.
It turned out to be so. Rudolf Weigl’s humanitarian use is recognized. In 2003, the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute, which studies and perpetuates the memory of the Holocaust, awarded Rudolf Weigl the title of “righteous international“.
This title is awarded to those who risked their lives during the Second World War and were rescued from the destruction of European Jews. The diploma and medal were awarded to Weigl’s granddaughter Christina Weigl-Albert.
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