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  3. April
  4. 23
  5. Johannes Fibiger

Births on April 23

Johannes Fibiger
1867Apr, 23

Johannes Fibiger

Johannes Fibiger, Danish physician and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928)
Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger (23 April 1867 – 30 January 1928) was a Danish physician and professor of anatomical pathology at the University of Copenhagen. He was the recipient of the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discovery of the Spiroptera carcinoma". He demonstrated that the roundworm which he called Spiroptera carcinoma (but correctly named Gongylonema neoplasticum) could cause stomach cancer (squamous cell carcinoma) in rats and mice. His experimental results were later proven to be a case of mistaken conclusion. Erling Norrby, who had served as the Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Professor and Chairman of Virology at the Karolinska Institute, declared Fibiger's Nobel Prize as "one of the biggest blunders made by the Karolinska Institute."While working at the Institute of Pathological Anatomy of University of Copenhagen, Fibiger discovered new roundworms in 1907 from wild rats. He suspected that the roundworms were responsible for stomach cancer in those rats. In 1913, he reported that he could experimentally induce cancer in healthy rats using the roundworms. His discovery was considered "the greatest contribution to experimental medicine" at the time. In 1926, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Katsusaburo Yamagiwa, who had experimentally induced carcinoma by painting crude coal tar on the inner surface of rabbits' ears in 1915. However, they were considered undeserving, and the 1926 prize was not given. In the next year Fibiger alone was retrospectively chosen for the 1926 Nobel Prize.

After his death, independent researches proved that G. neoplasticum cannot cause cancer. Tumours and cancer produced by Fibiger were due to vitamin A deficiency. Historical reassessment of Fibiger's data revealed that he had mistaken non-cancerous tumours for cancerous tumours.

His research method on diphtheria is regarded as the origin of an important research methodology in medicine known as controlled clinical trial.

References

  • Johannes Fibiger
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Choose Another Date

Events on 1867

  • 29Mar

    British North America Act

    Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1.
  • 1Apr

    Crown colony

    Singapore becomes a British crown colony.
  • 15May

    Imperial Bank of Canada

    Canadian Bank of Commerce opens for business in Toronto. The bank would later merge with Imperial Bank of Canada to become what is CIBC in 1961.
  • 3Nov

    Battle of Mentana

    Giuseppe Garibaldi and his followers are defeated in the Battle of Mentana and fail to end the Pope's Temporal power in Rome (it would be achieved three years later).
  • 9Nov

    Meiji Restoration

    Tokugawa shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.

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