10 GIANT LEAPS IN 20TH-CENTURY MEDICINE
1 KARL LANDSTEINER IDENTIFIES DIFFERENT BLOOD GROUPS
At the turn of the century, the Austrian biologist Karl Landsteiner identified the existence of three different blood groups within humans, A, B and O (although he called the latter C). This fuelled his subsequent discovery that combining blood from different groups resulted in blood cells being destroyed, while transfusing the blood of two people of the same blood group did not. With his sound science underpinning it, the practice of blood transfusions was established, leading to millions of lives being saved in the 120 years since Landsteiner’s discovery. For his breakthrough work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930.
