Arthur Felix


Arthur Felix, FRS was a Polish-born microbiologist and serologist.

Education and early life

Arthur Felix was the son of Theodor Felix, who had an interest in printed textiles and who encouraged his son to study textile dye chemistry. Felix studied chemistry in Vienna and was awarded a Doctor of Science degree. After working in his father's textile printing factory, he returned to Vienna to study microbiology. Arthus Felix was Jewish; he became interested in Zionism during his student days in Vienna and later developed into an authority on Palestine.

Career

In 1915, Arthur Felix and Edmund Weil were Austrian medical officers working in a field laboratory in Sokal and discovered a bacillus in the urine of patients suffering from typhus. They developed the Weil–Felix test for diagnosis of typhus and other rickettsial diseases. The use of the O and H symbols in the Kauffman–White classification originates from the research by Edmund Weil and Arthur Felix.
In 1934, Felix identified the Vi antigen in patients with typhoid fever.
After World War I, Felix emigrated to Britain and worked at the Lister Institute.
Felix researched in Bielsko, Vienna, Prague, and London. Between 1927 and 1945, he worked in Jerusalem for the Hadassah Medical Organization.

Awards and honours

In 1943 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.