Haffkine, W. M. 1860-1930

Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine , born Vladimir Aronovich (Markus-Volf) Khavkin (Russian: Владимир Аронович (Маркус-Вольф) Хавкин; 15 March 1860 – 26 October 1930) was a Russian-born bacteriologist known for his pioneering work in vaccines. Haffkine was educated at the Imperial Novorossiya University and later emigrated first to Switzerland, then to France, working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he developed a cholera vaccine that he tried out successfully in India. He is recognized as the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. Joseph Lister named him "a saviour of humanity". He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in Queen Victoria's 1897 Diamond Jubilee Honours. At that time The Jewish Chronicle noted "a Ukraine Jew, trained in the schools of European science, saves the lives of Hindus and Mohammedans and is decorated by the descendant of William the Conqueror and Alfred the Great." He naturalised as a British subject in 1900. In his final years Haffkine became deeply religious, becoming an advocate and philanthropist for Orthodox Jewish causes and a supporter of Zionism.