Johannes Fibiger, Danish Microbiologist

Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger (April 23, 1867 - January 30, 1928) was a Danish scientist, physician, and professor of pathological anatomy. While studying tuberculosis in lab rats, Fibiger found tumors in some of his rats. He discovered that these tumors were associated with parasitic nematode worms that had been living in some cockroaches that the rats had eaten. He believed these organisms may have been the cause of the cancer, but the rats suffered from a vitamin A deficiency and this was the main cause of the tumors. Although the specific link between the parasites and cancer was later known to be relatively unimportant, it was discovered later that tissue damage was a cause of cancer. This was an important advance in cancer research. One of his experiments from 1898 is by some regarded as the first controlled clinical trial. He won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for claim that the organism he called Spiroptera carcinoma caused cancer in mice and rats. Some consider his Nobel Prize to be undeserved. He died in 1928 at the age of 60

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Anatomist Andreas Cancer Johannes Laureate Microbiologist Nobelist Pathological Recipient

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