This project is to translate, edit and annotate the autobiography of Ludwik Hirszfeld, The Story of One Life. The book, which describes the life of the Polish microbiologist Hirszfeld (1884-1954), was first published in 1946 and has had many re-editions, as recently as 2000. The importance of making this work available in English stems primarily from the scientific accomplishments of Hirszfeld, who along with Emil von Dungern, established the ABO nomenclature and the inheritance of the blood groups, then discovered the population genetics of human blood groups. He also worked on the genetics of disease and immunology between the wars as scientific director of the new National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw, Poland's first and most important center for research in public health. Hirszfeld's personal life also adds to the significance of this project. Born into a prominent family of the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia, Hirszfeld completed his medical studies in Germany, obtaining his doctorate from the medical faculty of Berlin in 1907. He made his first major scientific contribution in Heidelberg with von Dungern. In the First World War, he joined the Allies, first in Serbia fighting a typhus epidemic, then in Greece, where the variety of Allied troops provided the subjects for his discovery of the geographical distribution of the ABO blood groups. Between the wars, he played a major role in the reconstruction of Polish scientific and intellectual life and, although he could have fled in 1939, Hirszfeld chose not to abandon his country. In 1941, he and his family were forced into the Warsaw ghetto where he helped set up a medical school and entered the Jewish sanitary council of the ghetto. In a vain effort to save his daughter's life, he managed to escape the ghetto just before the uprising and in hiding began writing his memoirs. After the Second World War, Hirszfeld was again very active in the scientific reconstruction of Poland. Despite the ideological totalitarianism, which dominated the country, he founded Poland's first Institute of Immunology in Wroclaw, which now bears his name. Utilizing interviews with former students, plus unpublished documents, this translation will be annotated and an introduction written by two scholars with unique qualifications to understand both the immediate setting in which Hirszfeld lived his life, as well as the broader implications of his work to the history of medicine. The University of Rochester Press has agreed to publish the translation.
