Karl Landsteiner Karl Landsteiner Karl Landsteiner, , (14 June 1868 – 26 June 1943) was an Austrian biologist, physician, and immunologist. He distinguished the main blood groups in 1900, having developed the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood, and identified, with Alexander S. Wiener, the Rhesus factor, in 1937, thus enabling physicians to transfuse blood without endangering the patient's life. With Constantin Levaditi and Erwin Popper, he discovered the polio virus in 1909. He received the Aronson Prize in 1926. In 1930, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine contributed directly to the ability of Watson and Crick to solve the structure of the DNA molecule. But Avery died in 1955, Franklin died in 1958 and posthumous nominations for the Nobel Prize are not permitted. However, recently unsealed files of the Nobel Prize nominations reveal that no one ever nominated Franklin for the prize when she was alive. Wilkins' crucial contribution was to show Rosalind Franklin's key x-ray photos to Watson. As a result of Watson's misrepresentations of Franklin and her role in the discovery of the double helix in his book "The Double Helix", Franklin has come to