Michael Heidelberger

Michael Heidelberger
Photograph of Heidelberger by Harold Low
Born	(1888-04-29)April 29, 1888 New York City, USA
Died	June 25, 1991(1991-06-25) (aged 103) New York City
Residence	US
Citizenship	American
Nationality	US
Fields	Organic chemistry Immunology
Institutions	Rockefeller Institute Mount Sinai Hospital, New York Columbia University Rutgers University New York University School of Medicine
Alma mater	Columbia University
Doctoral advisor	Marston Bogert
Known for	Properties of antibody
Notable awards	Lasker Award (1953) National Medal of Science (1967) Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (1977) Lasker Award (1978)
Spouses	Nina Tachau (m. 1916; d. 1946) Charlotte Rosen (m. 1956; d. 1988)

Michael Heidelberger ForMemRS (April 29, 1888 – June 25, 1991) was an American immunologist. He and Oswald Avery showed that the polysaccharides of pneumococcus are antigens, enabling him to show that antibodies are proteins. He spent almost his entire career at Columbia University, though in his later years he was also on the faculty of New York University. In 1934 and 1936 he received the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1967 he received the National Medal of Science, and then he earned the Lasker Award for basic medical research in 1953 and again in 1978. His papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

Heidelberger was born in 1888 in New York City to David and Fannie Campe Heidelberger, a traveling salesman and a homemaker respectively. An older brother had died shortly after birth; a younger brother, Charles, was born 21 months after Michael. His paternal grandfather, also named Michael, was a German Jew who had emigrated to the United States in the early 1840s.

Heidelberger's father had only an elementary school education, and was on the road for six months out of the year selling window curtains. It fell to Heidelberger's mother to take charge of the household and of Michael's education. She had attended a private girls' school in Norfolk, Virginia, and after graduation had stayed with relatives in Germany for a year. Until Michael was twelve, she taught him and his younger brother at home. They attended classical concerts, had to speak German at the table, and were taught French by a nanny during outings to nearby Central Park. Later in life he came to appreciate his early training in languages that were central to scientific discourse during the first half of the twentieth century.