Google Doodles often recognize people and events that have played a significant part in molding the history of the world. For today, September 2, the Google Doodle honours Polish biologist Rudolf Weigl, who played a major part in ending the typhus epidemic in the 1900s.
Polish biologist Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl was born on September 2, 1883, and today marks his 138th birth anniversary. Weigl contributed a lot towards the development of the typhus vaccine, which led to it not spreading to the scale of a pandemic.
Typhus had caused a lot of devastation across Europe at the time of World War I, and millions of people had been killed due to this epidemic. Putting his knowledge and resources to use, Rudolf Weigl decided to find the root cause of the epidemic and develop the tools to contain it.
He discovered that typhus was spreading due to lice carrying the infection. He began his research on the carriers of this illness and started developing the vaccine which would end the pandemic. The first large-scale testing of the typhus vaccine was conducted in 1933, after several years of modification.
Apart from developing the vaccine which saved the lives of millions, he is also known for being a great humanitarian. He saved the lives of thousands of Jews and helped them escape the brutal fate of ending up in a concentration camp.
When the Nazis had taken over Germany, they asked Weigl to manufacture his typhus vaccine in their country for the citizens. While opening up his vaccine plant, he employed 5000 Jews so that they are not deported to concentration camps. He also played a part in smuggling the vaccines to concentration camps, where they were not made available.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice in his lifetime but didn’t win. He passed away in 1957, and to recognize his hard work and humanitarianism, he was awarded the title ‘Righteous among the Nation’ by Isreal, in 2003.
