Paul Theodor Uhlenhuth (born in Hanover on 7 January 1870; died in Freiburg im Breisgau on 13 December 1957) was a German bacteriologist and hygienist and an assistant professor at the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Greifswald. He is famous in the annals of forensic science for developing the species precipitin test which could distinguish human blood from animal blood.
Starting with the a significant discovery by Emil von Behring that animals inoculated with diphtheria toxin formed defensive substances in their blood serum. These defensive substances were named precipitins. Other scientists principally Jules Bordet tried devising serums against other infectious agents they found that the precipitins were specific to the antagonist injected. In 1900 building off Bordet's work Uhlenhuth injected hen's blood into rabbits, then mixed serum from the rabbit with egg white the egg proteins separated (precipitated) from the mixture. He was able to conclude that the blood of different species animals contained unique proteins. These discoveries extended to being able to differentiate human blood from animal blood.
Fellow scientist, Otto Beumer, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Greifswald and the coroner of Greifswald learned of Uhlenhuth's work and joined him in perfecting the detection of human blood in dried bloodstains that were months or years old.[1]
His new technique was first used in the case of two murdered and dismembered children in the town of Göhren on the Baltic island of Rügen. The suspect in the case, Ludwig Tessnow claimed that the stains on his clothing were either cattle's blood or wood stain from a carpentry project. They were able to prove otherwise. Tessnow was executed for his crime in 1904.[2][3][4] In 1935 Wilhelm Pfannenstiel Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg nominated Uhlenhuth for the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in chemotherapy.[5] In 1915 Uhlenhoth was co-discoverer of Leptospira interrogans strain RGA a cause of Weil's disease a severe form of leptospirosis characterized by characterized by epistaxis, jaundice, chills, fever, muscle pain, and hepatomegaly, it was one of the many ailments to afflict soldiers involved in the trench warfare of World War I.[6]
In 1942 he was awarded the Emil von Behring prize,which is awarded every two years by the University of Marburg for outstanding achievements in immunology, serum therapy and chemotherapy. Uhlenhuth had multiple articles published in peer reviewed journals and was an active researcher in various areas of bacteriology and immunology including research into chemotherapy and syphilis.[7]Paul Ehrlich winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Medicine was an associate of Uhlenhuth.