6The Atlantic Seaboard


City of prosperous German-American parents, Zinsser, with both
A.B. and M.D. from Columbia, held the chair of bacteriology succes-
sively in three medical schools; at Leland Stanford, 1910-13, Columbia,
1913-23, and Harvard, 1923-40. He was a student of infectious dis-
eases on four continents, both in the laboratory and in the field. He
was in Stanford only briefly; we must bless his inadequate laboratory
facilities there, because that lack provided him with time to write a
large part of his important Infection and Resistance, rich in the immunol-
ogy of the German and French literature. Zinsser was always greatly
aided by his fluency in three languages.
   Although much of his active life extends beyond our period, his early
death from lymphatic leukemia and his wide stimulating influence lead
me to ignore the confining influence of dates. Of his more than 170
scientific papers, many with colleagues, his most noteworthy dealt
with rickettsial diseases, especially typhus fever, whose biography he
has told in arresting fashion in Rats, Lice and History. "And God was
on everyone's side. And when we had all gone to war and the stage was
set, typhus woke up again. Not everyone realizes that typhus has at
least as just a reason to claim that 'it won the war' as any of the con-
tending nations." Cultivation of the rickettsia, methods of injecting
the
lice, transfer of the infection, and preparation of vaccines all responded
to his zeal, although most of his methods are now outmoded. His work
on what he called residue antigens led him early to a generalization
emphasizing the antigenic significance of the nonprotein constituents of
bacteria, now recognized as so important through the investigations of
Avery and his colleagues. The unitarian theory of the nature of anti-
bodies, the relative size of viruses, and the characterization of bacterial
allergy were illuminated by Zinsser's studies and those of his associates.
   Personally he was gay, dynamic, voluble, a lover of horses and of
music, an exponent of good living and keen thinking, much enjoyed by
his friends and loved and admired by his intimates. He describes himself
as "one of the persons on whom all controversial questions of his time
acted like horseflies on a half-broken mule." Zinsser enjoyed a good
tale, especially if it was a bit Rabelaisian, and he loved a practical joke.
I place him on Mount Olympus, at the top of the second generation of
American bacteriologists. He was honored everywhere, b~ member-
ship in societies both foreign and domestic, by the presidency of sev-
eral, by honorary degrees, and by exchange professorships, in France,
1935, and in China, 1939. "Student, philosopher, scientist, organizer


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