Emil Claus Gotschlich (January 17, 1935 – February 14, 2023) was an American physician-scientist, who was professor emeritus at the

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

. He was best known for his development of the first meningitis vaccine in 1970.

Early life and education

Emil Gotschlich was born in Bangkok, Thailand, on January 17, 1935, to German parents, Emil Clemens Gotschlich, a physician in private practice in Thailand and his wife Magdalene, née Holst, who were both physicians. His grandfather, Emil Carl Anton Constantin Gotschlich was a prominent German academic physician, who specialized in cholera and tropical diseases and had been a student of

Carl Flügge Carl Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Flügge (12 September 1847 – 10 December 1923) was a German bacteriologist and hygienist. His finding that pathogens were present in expiratory droplets, the eponymous Flügge droplets, laid ground for the concept ...

and a colleague of

Max Joseph von Pettenkofer Max Joseph Pettenkofer, ennobled in 1883 as Max Joseph von Pettenkofer (3 December 1818 – 10 February 1901) was a Bavarian chemist and hygienist. He is known for his work in practical hygiene, as an apostle of good water, fresh air and proper s ...

and

Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the Vibrio ...

. His great uncle, Felix Gotschlich had isolated

Vibrio cholerae ''Vibrio cholerae'' is a species of Gram-negative, facultative anaerobe and comma-shaped bacteria. The bacteria naturally live in brackish or saltwater where they attach themselves easily to the chitin-containing shells of crabs, shrimps, and oth ...

in 1906. Emil Gotschlich was mainly brought up in Switzerland; his mother worked at a home for children rescued from the

Nazi death camps Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

. In 1950, when Gotschlich was 15, his family moved to the USA. In 1959, Gotschlich graduated from the

New York University School of Medicine NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...

. He interned at

Bellevue Hospital Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States b ...

in New York and in 1960 joined

The Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

's Laboratory of Bacteriology and Immunology under

Rebecca Lancefield Rebecca Craighill Lancefield (January 5, 1895 – March 3, 1981). p.227 was a prominent American microbiologist. She joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York in 1918, and was associated with ...

and

Maclyn McCarty Maclyn McCarty (June 9, 1911 – January 2, 2005) was an American geneticist, a research scientist described in 2005 as "the last surviving member of a Manhattan scientific team that overturned medical dogma in the 1940's and became the first to ...

Career

From 1966 until 1968, Gotschlich worked at the

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The institute is centered at the Forest Glen Annex, in the Forest Glen Park part of the uni ...

in Silver Spring, MD. He and his coworkers developed a purified polysaccharide vaccine for

Meningococcus ''Neisseria meningitidis'', often referred to as meningococcus, is a Gram-negative bacterium that can cause meningitis and other forms of meningococcal disease such as meningococcemia, a life-threatening sepsis. The bacterium is referred to as a ...

group C meningitis. He first tested it on himself after it had failed in laboratory animals. In 1970, the vaccine was approved for use in military recruits. Returning to Rockefeller he developed a vaccine against Meningococcus group A. He was also involved in research on

Neisseria gonorrhoeae ''Neisseria gonorrhoeae'', also known as ''gonococcus'' (singular), or ''gonococci'' (plural), is a species of Gram-negative diplococci bacteria isolated by Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser, Albert Neisser in 1879. It causes the sexually transmit ...

and

streptococcal infection ''Streptococcus'' is a genus of gram-positive ' (plural ) or spherical bacteria that belongs to the family Streptococcaceae, within the order Lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria), in the phylum Bacillota. Cell division in streptococci occurs ...

. In 1978, he was promoted to professor and senior physician at The Rockefeller University Hospital. From 1996 to 2005 he served as the hospital's vice president for medical sciences. In 2001, he was involved in a committee that evaluated the plan of the

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgi ...

of the US Army's

anthrax vaccine Anthrax vaccines are vaccines to prevent the livestock and human disease anthrax, caused by the bacterium ''Bacillus anthracis''. They have had a prominent place in the history of medicine, from Pasteur's pioneering 19th-century work with cattle ...

Personal life and death

Gotschlich was married and had 4 children. He died on February 14, 2023, at the age of 88, survived by his second wife, immunologist Kathleen Haines and his children: Emil Christofer Gotschlich, Emil Chandler Gotschlich, Hilda Christina Gartley, and Emily Claire Gotschlich.

Awards and honors

In 1974, he received the Squibb Award by the

Infectious Diseases Society of America The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) is a medical association representing physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who specialize in infectious diseases. It was founded in 1963 and is based in Arlington, Virginia. ...

. In 1978 he received the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award and in 2008 the Dart/NYU Biotechnology Achievement Award. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and its

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gotschlich, Emil C. 1935 births 2023 deaths New York University Grossman School of Medicine alumni Recipients of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the National Academy of Medicine Vaccinologists