[Konrad Birkhaug and the BCG vaccine]

Konrad Elias Birkhaug (1892-1980) was born in Bergen to Elisa Marie Skorge and Karl Anders Birkhaug, a policeman, as the sixth of their ten children. After a period as a laboratory assistant at Bergen Municipal Hospital, he emigrated to USA in 1911. He graduated from the medical school of Johns Hopkins University in 1924. After residency in bacteriology, he became professor at Rochester University in 1927 and head of its laboratory of bacteriology. From 1932 to 1935 he worked as a senior scientist at the Institute Pasteur in Paris and from 1935 to 1945 as a fellow of the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen. From 1937 he also headed the National Laboratory for production of BCG vaccine. After active involvement in the resistance movement against the Nazis during the Second World War, he returned to the USA in 1946 as head of the BCG laboratory of the State of New York in Albany. He retired in 1953 and settled in Bergen, where he died in 1980. Birkhaug is one of the pioneers in the research on immunity reactions to tuberculosis infection and BCG vaccination. He is also known for producing the first antiserum against erysipelas, which was used from 1927 until sulphonamides were discovered. In addition to his international scientific publications, he wrote two books in Norwegian, his autobiography and a book about the German eradication of a small fishermen's village in Western Norway during the Second World War.