Jules Bordet

Jules Bordet (1870 to 1961) was a Belgian immunologist and microbiologist, born at Soignies, after whom the bacterial genus Bordetella is named. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine from the Free University of Brussels in 1892 and began work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1894, in the laboratory of Elie Metchnikoff. In 1895 he showed that the bacteriolytic effect of specific antibody is enhanced by innate serum components he called alexine, now known as complement, and complement fixation methods built on this work enabled serological tests for syphilis. With Octave Gengou he isolated Bordetella pertussis in pure culture in 1906, and he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1919 for his discoveries relating to immunity.