Von Gruber, Max (1853-1927)

von Gruber, Max (1853-1927)

Austrian physician and bacteriologist

Max von Gruber's discovery of specific bacterial agglutination in 1896 laid the groundwork for significant advances in serology and immunology .

Gruber was born in Vienna, the son of a prominent physician, Ignaz Gruber (1803–1872), and his wife, née Gabrielle Edle von Menninger. His brother, Franz von Gruber (1837–1918), became famous as an architect, military engineer, and teacher. After preparing for college at the Schottengymnasium in Vienna, Gruber studied chemistry and physiology at the University of Vienna, earned his M.D. there in 1876, then took postgraduate instruction in the biosciences under Max Josef von Pettenkoffer (1818–1901) in Vienna, Carl von Voit (1831–1908) and Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli (1817–1891) in Munich, Germany, and Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (1816–1895) in Leipzig, Germany. Among his fellow graduate students under Pettenkoffer was Hans Buchner (1850–1902), who urged Gruber toward bacteriology.

Gruber began lecturing on hygiene at the University of Vienna in 1882, became professor of hygiene at the University of Graz, Austria, in 1884, and assumed the same position in 1887 at the University of Vienna, where he remained until 1902. He was promoted in 1891 to full professor. He was unhappy in Vienna because he considered the facilities ill kept and substandard. Nevertheless, he was able to attract to Vienna such stellar graduate students as future Nobel laureate Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943), Alois Lode (b. 1866), and Herbert Edward Durham (1866–1945). From 1902 until he retired in 1923, Gruber was director of the Institute for Hygiene, Munich.

In March, 1896, Gruber and Durham published a landmark article in a prestigious journal, Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift [Munich Medical Weekly], which described how bacteria of similar size clump together in sera, in ways specific to or determined by each serum. Their research concerned the typhoid bacillus Salmonella typhi, the cholera bacillus Vibrio cholerae, and the respective sera of typhoid and cholera patients. This clumping process, agglutination, soon had wider implications for serology, immunology, bacteriology, and clinical medicine. The first important practical consequence of Gruber's work on bacterial agglutination occurred in June 1896, when the French physician Georges Fernand Isidor Widal (1862–1929) developed a diagnostic agglutination test for typhoid, thereafter known as the Gruber-Widal test or the Gruber-Widal reaction.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Gruber's main interest shifted toward right-wing social theory, political eugenics, and so-called "racial hygiene." His Hygiene des Geschlechtslebens [Sexual Hygiene] first appeared in 1903, was reprinted or revised fifty-two times by 1925, and was translated into many languages, including English. With psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin (1874–1952), later a Nazi, Gruber co-edited Fortpflanzung, Vererbung, und Rassenhygiene [Propagation, Inheritance, and Racial Hygiene] in 1911. Thereafter, much of his work was political propaganda. Gruber attended Adolph Hitler's first big rally in 1921 and was impressed by Hitler's control of the crowd and command of issues. Gruber died in Berchtesgaden, Germany, on September 16, 1927.

See also Antibody-antigen, biochemical and molecular reactions; Bacteria and bacterial infection; History of immunology; Typhoid fever