Biography of George H. F. Nuttall 



George Henry Falkiner Nuttall was born 

 in San Francisco, Calif., on July 5, 

 1862, the second of three sons and two 

 daughters of Robert Kennedy Nuttall, 

 M.D., and his wife, Magdalena. His 

 father (1815-81) received his doctor of 

 medicine degree from Aberdeen in 1847 

 and was a physician in the prison colony 

 in Tasmania for 4 years before migrating 

 to San Francisco and establishing an 

 obstetrical practice. In 1865, the 

 family moved to Europe, where the chil- 

 dren were educated in France, Germany, 

 England, and Switzerland. In 1873, his 

 father took a house in Richmond, Surrey, 

 and George went to Epsom for a part of 

 his primary school education; in 1876, 

 he was privately tutored before returning 

 to America in 1878. It was to this cos- 

 mopolitan upbringing that Nuttall owed 

 his ability to speak German, French, 

 Italian, and Spanish, accomplishments 

 that were to help him greatly in his 

 scientific career and travels. He 

 entered the University of California, 

 Berkeley, to study medicine and obtained 

 a doctor of medicine degree in 1884 and 

 also won the Kane Prize. 



After 1 year at Johns Hopkins University 

 in Baltimore, Md., Nuttall went to 

 Germany--f irst, to Breslau and later, 

 Gottingen, where he became interested in 

 parasitology, which became the main 

 scientific interest of his life. In 

 1891, he returned to America as assistant 

 to W. H. Welch, professor of pathology 

 at Johns Hopkins. From 1892 to 1899, he 

 worked on hygiene at Gottingen and 

 Berlin. In 1895, he married Paula von 

 Oertzen-Kittendorf (1873-1922) of 

 Mecklenburg. They had two sons, George 

 (b. 1896) and Winfred (1897-1972), and a 

 daughter, Carmelita (b. 1902). In 1899, 

 Nuttall gave lectures on bacteriology at 

 Cambridge. A year later, he was ap- 

 pointed university lecturer in bacteri- 

 ology and preventive medicine. 



In 1901, Nuttall founded the "Journal of 

 Hygiene," which he edited up to the time 

 of his death. Seven years later he began 

 "Parasitology," which he edited until 

 1933. The following note appears in 



Nuttall' s journal for May 1900: "In 

 this month I saw Dr. John Haldane, 

 F.R.S., at a meeting of the Physio- 

 logical Society in Cambridge. We had a 

 conversation which led to our starting 

 the JOURNAL OF HYGIENE the public 

 announcement of which appeared in 

 October, the first number coming out in 

 January 1901. The suggestion initiated 

 from Haldane, who being a physiologist 

 was unwilling to take on the chief 

 editorship. Dr. Arthur Newsholme, 

 representing the administration side of 

 Hygiene, joined us as third editor and 

 we soon secured a lengthy list of collab- 

 orators in all parts of the world." In 

 his editorial work he displayed the same 

 thoroughness as in his research. He 

 considered that part of the duty of an 

 editor was educational and spent much 

 time in correcting and improving papers 

 and in advising young and inexperienced 

 workers. As editor, he exerted great 

 influence on investigators all over the 

 world, and his journals became models 

 upon which the publications of several 

 scientific societies were based. 



Among his outstanding contributions to 

 science was his discovery while working 

 in Flugge's Institute (1888) that def i - 

 brinated blood possesses a strong 

 bactericidal property against anthrax 

 bacilli and that this property dis- 

 appears by heating the blood to 55° C. 

 The results of this work were incor- 

 porated in a paper "A Contribution to 

 the Study of Immunity," which received 

 the triennial Boylston Prize from Harvard 

 University. This work initiated the 

 study of humoral immunity and was tne 

 forerunner of such great discoveries as 

 antitoxic immunity by workers like 

 E. A. Behring and S. Kitasato. It 

 occupied also a prominent place in the 

 discussion of humoral versus cellular 

 immunity formulated by E. Metchnikoff. 



In collaboration with W. H. Welch (1892), 

 he studied in great detail the anaerobic 

 gas-producing micro-organism known now 

 as Clostridium perfringens , the agent of 

 gas gangrene, the importance of which as 

 a pathogenic agent was not fully appre- 

 ciated until World War I. 



