Jules Bordet

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Belgian immunologist (1870–1961)

Bordet was born in Soignies, Belgium, and graduated in medicine from Brussels University in 1892. In 1894 joined the Pasteur Institute, Paris, where he worked under the bacteriologist Elie Metchnikoff. In collaboration with Octave Gengou, Bordet discovered that in an immunized animal the antibodies produced by the immune response work in conjunction with another component of blood (which Bordet termed ‘alexin’ but which is now called ‘complement’) to destroy foreign cells that invade the body. This component, Bordet found, was present in both immunized and nonimmunized animals and was destroyed by heating to over 55°C. This work formed the basis of the complement-fixation test, a particularly sensitive means of detecting the presence of any specific type of cell or its specific antibody. A notable application of this was the test to detect syphilis devised by August von Wasserman.

In 1901 Bordet left Paris to found and direct the Pasteur Institute in Brussels and in 1907 he was appointed professor of pathology and bacteriology at Brussels University. In 1906 Bordet isolated the bacterium responsible for whooping cough, which is named after him: Bordetella (Haemophilus) pertussis. For his discovery of complement and other contributions to medicine, he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Belgian bacteriologist. With French bacteriologist Octave Gengou (1875–1957), he developed (1900) the technique of complement fixation testing and discovered (1906) the agent of whooping cough. Bordet won a 1919 Nobel Prize for advances in immunology.

Jules Bordet

Jules Bordet's grave in Ixelles Cemetery

Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet (Soignies (Belgium) 13 June 1870 – 6 April 1961) was a Belgian immunologist and microbiologist. The bacterial genus Bordetella is named after him.

Biography

He graduated in the year 1892 as Doctor of Medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) and began his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1894, where, in the laboratory of Elie Metchnikoff, he described phagocytosis of bacteria by white blood cells. In 1898 he described hemolysis evoked by exposure of blood serum to foreign blood cells.

In 1900, he left Paris to found the Pasteur Institute in Brussels, and made his discovery that the bacteriolytic effect of acquired specific antibody is significantly enhanced in vivo by the presence of innate serum components which he termed alexine (but which are now known as complement). This mechanism became the basis for complement-fixation testing methods that enabled the development of serological tests for syphilis (specifically, the development of the Wassermann test by August von Wassermann). The same technique is used today in serologic testing for countless other diseases.

With Octave Gengou he isolated Bordetella pertussis in pure culture in 1906 and posited it as the cause of whooping cough. He became Professor of Bacteriology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1907.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to him in 1919 for his discoveries relating to immunity.

Bordet died in 1961 and was interred in the Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels. He was a freemason and member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Institut Jules Bordet

External links

• Jules Bordet
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1919
• Jules Bordet Institute
• Jules Bordet Museum
• Bordet Page at Find-A-Grave

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine Emil Behring (1901) · Ronald Ross (1902) · Niels Finsen (1903) · Ivan Pavlov (1904) · Robert Koch (1905) · Camillo Golgi / Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1906) · Alphonse Laveran (1907) · Ilya Mechnikov / Paul Ehrlich (1908) · Emil Kocher (1909) · Albrecht Kossel (1910) · Allvar Gullstrand (1911) · Alexis Carrel (1912) · Charles Richet (1913) · Robert Bárány (1914) · Jules Bordet (1919) · August Krogh (1920) · Archibald Hill / Otto Meyerhof (1922) · Frederick Banting / John Macleod (1923) · Willem Einthoven (1924) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

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