pathologist physician scientist
Fibiger was born in 1867 in a Danish village called Silkeborg. Christian Emanuel August Fibiger, his father, was a local medical practitioner (district physician), while Christine Dorothea Michelle Elfride Müller Fibiger, his mother, was a writer. She was also a daugteer of a Danish politician, so it is safe to say that Johannes was born into a reputable family. Johannes got his name after his father's brother, who was a poet and a clergyman.
Johannes’ father died due to apoplexy when he was only three years old, which led to him and his mother and sister moving to Copenhagen. The whole family was supported by his mother, who wrote journals, short stories, and cookbooks. She even established the first ever Copenhagen Cooking School. However, she spent too much time earning enough money to support her two kids so she didn’t dedicate to her children’s education.
An uncle sent Fibiger to an elementary school, where he showed great talent and diligence, along with an interest in botany and insects. Johannes would spend his holidays with Reverend Johannes Fibiger, another uncle, who helped him during his education. After elementary school, Fibiger entered the University of Copenhagen in 1883 after passing the matriculation exam. He studied botany and zoology and paid for his education by working and teaching at the university’s zoology lab.
During his studies, he lived with his mother, whose cooking school has expanded, so she founded a restaurant. Mathilde Fibiger, a distant cousin, came to work with Johannes’ mother. She and Johannes soon became engaged (1888) but continued living there until he finishes school and they can move out and get married (they finally got married in 1894). Fibiger finished his education in 1890 and got his medical degree. Five years later, he received his doctoral degree from the same university, which habilitated him for pathological anatomy.
After getting his medical degree, Fibiger was working in various hospitals. Among others, he was given the opportunity to study under Robert Koch and Emil Adolf von Behring, famous bacteriologists at the time, who Fibiger befriended. In 1891, he was hired as an assistant at the University of Copenhagen. He was assisting at the Bacteriology Department to Professor Carl Julius Salomonsen.
From 1894 to 1897, he was serving as an Army reserve doctor at the Blegdam Hospital. He used this period to complete “Research into the bacteriology of diphtheria”, his doctoral thesis, which led to him receiving his doctorate in 1895. Diphtheria was a huge problem at the time and outbursts of the disease were quite often in Denmark, so Fibiger was working diligently and managed to produce an experimental serum against the disease. Between May 1896 and May 1897 patients who were admitted to the Blegdam Hospital due to suffering from bacteria were divided into two groups – control group and experimental group, with the second one getting the serum along the standard treatment. The results were strong in favor of the serum but the biggest progress was the improvement of methodology when it comes to clinical trials, as a big number of patients, strict methods of planning and conducting were implemented. International medical Congress published Fibiger’s report in 1897, which lead to forming the Serum Institute.
The same year he was appointed as prosector at the Institute of Pathological Anatomy of the University of Copenhagen. In 1900, he was promoted to the Professor of Pathological Anatomy and the Director of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy. Together with his colleague C.O. Jenson, he conducted a research on tuberculosis in cattle and made some important discoveries. Their research showed that humans can contract tuberculosis if they drink the milk of the cattle that’s infected, which led to much stricter regulation of milk and fewer deaths due to tuberculosis with adolescents.
Fibiger’s next research focus was tuberculosis in rats, which will eventually lead him to a Nobel Prize. When he dissected three wild rats with stomach tumors, he found a by then unknown roundworm type. He called it Spiroptera neoplastica and researched the possibility of this roundworm causing cancer with rats. He tried to reproduce the phenomena and was unsuccessful at first. However, he later tested new specimens that he received from a sugar factory infested with cockroaches and mice. He concluded that the cockroaches were infected with the roundworms causing cancer and they were the ones who infected the mice. Fibiger tested this idea and managed to reproduce cancerous stomach tumors.in rats and mice he caught for the research. This was a ground-breaking discovery in cancer research as Fibiger was the first scientist to produce cancer in a laboratory. In 1913, he announced the discovery of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and his results were also published in the Journal of Cancer Research. He was acclaimed internationally and biggest awards for this achievement came in 1926 when he was awarded a Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology and Medicine, and 1927, when he got the Nordhoff-Jung Cancer Prize.
There is some controversy regarding the study that brought Fibiger the Nobel Prize. Other pathologist proved in the following years that the roundworms are not directly responsible for gastric tumors, therefore it wasn’t likely that he actually produced cancer in a laboratory setting. However, nobody can’t deny that his research was a prelude to all the others that led to new discoveries.
Fibiger wrote 79 scientific papers and made great contributions to the study of cancer, tuberculosis, and diphtheria. He was also the president of the Danish Medical Society and the president of the Northern Association of Pathologists. He was a member of the Royal Danish Scientific Society and got honorary degrees from Sorbonne and Louvain in Paris. Journalism was among his hobbies, he co-founded the journal Acta Pathologica et Microbiologica Scandinavica and edited it.
During the Nobel festivities in Stockholm in 1927, he fell ill. When they took him to a hospital, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He died on January 30, 1928, due to a massive heart attack.
(Fibiger was the first one to produce cancer in a laborato...)
1913Although he was a man of science, Johannes Fibiger was close to his uncle, Reverend Johannes Fibiger, who supported his education.
Fibiger was a member of Danish elite, the president of the Danish Medical Society and a member of the Royal Danish Scientific Society but he never took a big role in politics.
Fibiger was a man dedicated to science and research. He held the Nobel Prize in high regards but the most important thing to him was that the research he conducted led to discoveries and brought progress that will help improve people's knowledge about particular diseases. He carefully followed work of his colleagues from around the world, he even co-founded and edited a journal. He didn't have problems to accept that his colleagues sometimes perfected the results of his research but he would gladly implement them in his research that followed.
During the speech when he was accepting the Nobel Prize, he expressed doubt that parasites were the major cause of gastric tumours in humans.
From his first days in school, he showed great thirst for knowledge. He was very diligent throughout his life, which is best proven by the fact that he published 79 scientific papers and was a part of numerous scientific institutions. He was proud of his work but he also acknowledged works of other scientists.
Physical Characteristics: His height remains unknown but from his pictures you can see that he had a moustache and a beard. He wore glasses and his appearance was in line with the fact that he was a respected doctor and scientist.
He married his distant cousin, Mathilde Fibiger, in 1894, after being engaged for six years. They had two children together.
